Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: Role, organisation and strength of Iran's elite force explained
at Israel, on Saturday night, in what is being called first direct clash between the two enemy nations engaged in a shadow war for years. Until now, Iran had been involved in the war through its proxies. Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said the attack was aimed at specific targets.’ Earlier, country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had vowed to ‘retaliate’ after an alleged Israeli strike on April 1 on its consulate in Damascus, Syria killed seven IRGC officers, including a top commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi.
Israel neither confirmed nor denied its role in the Damascus strike. Follow all live updates on Iran-Israel tension Here So, IRGC is at the center of the fresh escalation in the crisis in Middle East. What is the IRGC, when was it formed and how big is the organisation, LiveMint tries to answer some of the key questions about the elite force.
IRGC is a multi-service primary branch of the Iranian Armed Forces different from country's traditional Army. While the Iranian Army protects the country's sovereignty, IRGC is largely aimed at defending the Islamic Republic of Iran against internal and external threats. Over the years, the corps has gained an outsize role in executing Iran’s foreign policy and it wields control over vast segments of the country’s economy, according to US think tank, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In 2019, the then US President Donald Trump designated the IRGC a terrorist organization.
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