Elite Revolutionary Guard's expanding role in Iran may limit U.S. options

Image by Hamed Saber via Flickr

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A10

TEHRAN -- A major expansion in the role played by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is giving the elite force new economic and political clout, but it could also complicate efforts by the United States and its allies to put pressure on the Iranian regime, according to U.S. officials and outside analysts.

Commanders of the Revolutionary Guard say its growth represents a logical expansion for an organization that is not a military force but a popular movement that protects the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard's expanded economic role is mirrored by a greater role in politics and security since the disputed presidential election in June, which the government says was won by incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a landslide but which the opposition says was stolen.

U.S. officials consider the Guard a ripe target for sanctions over Iran's controversial nuclear program because of the group's central role in repressing post-election opposition protests. The officials are also concerned that broader-based sanctions risk alienating the Iranian public at a time when the government here faces protests from an energized opposition. But they also know that because of the Guard's growing economic influence, sanctions on it could pinch the broader Iranian public as well.

Supporters and opponents alike say the Guard has dramatically expanded its reach into Iran's economy, with vast investments in thousands of companies across a range of sectors. Working through its private-sector arm, the group operates Tehran's international airport, builds the nation's highways and constructs communications systems. It also manages Iran's weapons manufacturing business, including its controversial missile program.

The Guard has received at least $6 billion worth of government contracts in two years, according to state-run media. But the amount could be much higher in reality because many deals are not made public. Known large projects include the construction of a subway system in the eastern city of Mashhad and infrastructure ventures in the oil and gas industry. In September, Etemad-e Mobin, an investment company that Iranian media have widely linked to the Guard, bought a 51 percent share of the national telecommunications business minutes after it was privatized. Its main competitor was disqualified at the last moment because of "security problems."

Current U.N. and U.S. sanctions already target the Guard, as well as some related companies, for involvement in Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The U.S. Treasury Department has assembled lists of dozens of companies that it suspects are Guard front operations or affiliates. U.S. officials say they hope to broaden the existing sanctions to include this substantial list of additional Guard companies, either with U.N. Security Council authority or through a coalition that would include major industrialized powers and key Persian Gulf countries.

Guardians of the system

Constitutionally established as a defender of the Islamic revolution, the Guard was created to work separately from the regular army, which was distrusted by the country's new leaders when they took over in 1979. The religious leadership has used the Guard to take on competing political and ethnic groups. It was also at the forefront of fighting during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Saying the Islamic revolution had entered a "new phase," the Guard led a deadly crackdown on street protests after the election last year and accused opposition politicians, dissidents and journalists of an elaborate plot to bring down Iran's leaders. The Guard has since grown into one of the most visible power players in the country and is the strongest opponent of the grass-roots movement that has staged protests in several cities.

"They [the Guard] have become the main, most faithful caste, to protect the system of Islamic government," said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a former journalist, who now works as an analyst at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran. "In exchange, wealth, power and respect are being transferred to them at an increasing rate." He was among many arrested last month after a day of major demonstrations. The reason for the arrest was not clear.

Ties between the Guard and the Ahmadinejad government are close.

Key cabinet ministries, such as oil, energy, interior and defense, are led by former Guard commanders. A former energy minister, Parviz Fattah, was appointed deputy commander of the Guard's massive Khatam ol-Anbia construction division, which is at the heart of the organization's business activities. It has 29 branches, called 'Ghorbs,' which build airplanes, dams, and oil and gas installations. Most of the Guard's contracts are with the government.

Opposition leaders say the Guard's business interests are corrupting the organization. "If the Guard has to calculate on its abacus every day to see how much the prices of their shares have gone up or down, it cannot defend the country and national interests," opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said last week in a statement posted on a Web site linked to him.

"After the war, the Guard did not become a useless military machine, which would be of no use during peacetime," said the Guard's top commander, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, in a September interview with the Jam-e Jam newspaper. "Today we are active in the fields that the revolution requires."

The Guard's construction garrison acts as a commercial company, but it is unclear what happens with its revenue. Commanders say the Guard income is transferred to the national treasury, but there are no public records that provide any amounts. Most of the group's contracts are carried out by its business divisions, which directly compete with private-sector firms.

The rise of the Guard

Iranian officials say they are undaunted by the threats of new sanctions. They point to four previous rounds of U.N. sanctions that have not proved very effective.

"U.S. sanctions will have no negative effect since the Guard organization is self-sufficient. Everything they need is here in Iran," Kazem Jalali, a member of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said in an interview. "The Americans know that the Guard Corps is a defender of the values of the Islamic revolution. So the Americans aim to target its core."

The Guard's expansion into Iran's economy started in the early 1990s, when then-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani tried to jump-start private enterprise in the state-run economy by allowing state organizations to undertake commercial projects. The political rise of the Guard runs parallel with the ascendancy of the reformists in 1997. The movement called for more personal freedoms, fewer Islamic restrictions and a greater role for democracy. Political hard-liners turned to the Guard for more muscle in combating the reformists; in exchange, the Guard was given more influence in the economy and in politics.

In a November interview with the Ettemaad-e Melli newspaper, which is critical of the government, Guard commander Gen. Massoud Jazayeri said that the force could now "even compete with huge multinational and international companies" and added: "We don't want to receive an income but want to satisfy the people."

The result has been that the Guard controls a large part of Iran's economy, analysts say. "You can't see a single project above $10 million that is not executed by the Guard or one of their organizations," said Shamsolvaezin, the analyst. He warned that economic power could produce more demands for political power. "Some of our leaders now fear that [the Guard] will take everything into their hands."

Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie in Tehran contributed to this report.

Revolutionary Guards Extend Reach to Iran's Media - WSJ.com

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Planned News Agency Fits With Move to Dominate Accounts of Events; 'They Want to Control Public Opinion'

By FARNAZ FASSIHI

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, already an economic, political and military power, is quietly pushing into a new domain: the media.

By March, the Revolutionary Guards plan to launch Atlas, a news agency modeled on services such as the Associated Press and the British Broadcasting Corp., according to semiofficial Iranian news sites. The move comes as the Guards are increasing control over the conservative Fars News Agency, which has become the mouthpiece of the Iranian regime. Fars denies that it is linked to the Guards.

On Thursday, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the head of the Basij, a Revolutionary Guard volunteer task force, announced what he called a new era of "super media power" cooperation between the media and the Revolutionary Guards, according to official Iranian news outlets.

Analysts say the Guards aim to control the official account of events coming out of Iran and offer a counternarrative to reports published by independent and reformist media outlets.

The Guards "want to dominate the flow of information and be the ones telling the world what's going on in Iran," says Omid Memarian, a dissident journalist who now lives in the U.S. and who did his military service with the Guards.

Last week, the government awarded Fars first place for best news agency at Iran's annual media fair. At the same time, it has shut down reformist newspapers and Web sites. On Monday, business newspaper Sarmayeh, which has been critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's economic policies, was shut down. The official IRNA news agency said the daily was closed because its content strayed from business topics.

The Revolutionary Guards, created shortly after the 1979 revolution, have increased their influence since 2005 during the administration of President Ahmadinejad, himself a former member. The government's current slate of cabinet ministers, provincial governors, ambassadors and lawmakers draws heavily from former members or commanders of the Guards.

In October, a business unit of the Guards bought 51% of the shares of Iran's Telecommunications Co. from the government for about $8 billion, effectively gaining control of the country's telephone landlines, all Internet providers and two mobile-phone companies. (The government directly owns the rest of the company.)

The Guards control Iran's strategic long-range missiles and have business holdings in sectors from oil and gas to construction, shipping and telecommunications. When unrest erupted across Iran after the disputed re-election of Mr. Ahmadinejad in June, the Guards were responsible for a crackdown to restore security.

In September, two Fars News Agency photographers, Javad Moghimi, 24 years old, and Hossein Salmanzadeh, 34, fled to Turkey and requested asylum. Their account of the Guards' presence at Fars offers insight into the force's media connections.

The two men say they left Iran after receiving a warning from Fars News' managing editor, a former Revolutionary Guards commander, following pictures they took of opposition protests. Both men say they were taking pictures anonymously and selling them to foreign agencies abroad.

"We were insiders defying orders to not cover opposition gatherings. They considered what we did treason," says Mr. Moghimi, whose picture of a demonstration in Tehran made the cover of Time magazine in June.

Experts say Fars News content closely mirrors the tone and language of the Revolutionary Guard weekly magazine, Sobh-e-Sadegh. The agency's top editors and editorial board are all former Guard commanders. Fars is housed in a building owned by the Guards in central Tehran that was previously the headquarters of the force's intelligence unit.

Fars News Agency's head of public relations, who gave his name as Mr. Salehi, denied when reached by phone in Tehran that the agency was affiliated with the government or the Revolutionary Guards, but declined to elaborate.

Mr. Moghimi and Mr. Salmanzadeh joined Fars when it was created, about seven years ago. The Guard presence has become more visible during Mr. Ahmadinejad's administration, says Mr. Salmanzadeh, who was the agency's deputy photo editor. Many editors were removed, including top management, and Guard members with no journalism experience took their positions, Mr. Salmanzadeh and other people familiar with the situation say.

The new management put editorial restrictions on the staff, the two photographers say. Reporters had to write favorable pieces about the government, and photographers had to angle their camera lenses to show bigger crowds during pro-government rallies, they say. Staff were banned from covering Christmas because it promoted Christianity, and couldn't take pictures of Turkish whirling dervishes because they promote mystical Islam, the photographers and others say, and pictures of women were allowed only if the women were properly veiled.

Journalists from Fars News took part in interrogating dissidents, according to several dissidents who say there were journalists present jotting notes in a corner during the dissidents' interrogations in 2007.

This past spring, in the months leading up to the June presidential election, Fars created a "journalism center," Tavana Club, to train young, hard-line Basij volunteers, according to Iranian media. In July, as protests against the June election results intensified, Fars fired 39 independent reporters from its staff for not being in line with the organization's new policies, and replaced them with the newly trained hard-liners, according to Iranian media reports.

Fars declined to comment on the dismissals. The Fars Web site added an icon to its home page titled "the Velvet Revolution," with daily updates explaining how the opposition was funded and orchestrated by Western countries, including the U.S. and the U.K.

Mr. Moghimi and Mr. Salmanzadeh left Iran separately in early September, without saying goodbye to their families, after the warning from Fars News' managing editor.

The two men now live as refugees in a tiny apartment in a small town in central Turkey with little furniture and no heat. They have applied for asylum at the Ankara offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

"The Revolutionary Guard now understands that political power is interconnected to media power, and they want to control public opinion," says Ali Alfoneh, a visiting research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, who has studied the Guards extensively.

Write to Farnaz Fassihi at farnaz.fassihi@wsj.com

Elite Guard in Iran Tightens Grip With Media Move - NYTimes.com

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By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — As Iran continues to manage the aftershocks of its contested presidential election, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has moved aggressively to tighten its grip on society, most recently with its takeover of a majority share in the nation’s telecommunications monopoly.

The nearly $8 billion acquisition by a company affiliated with the elite force has amplified concerns in Iran over what some call the rise of a pseudogovernment, prompting members of Parliament to begin an investigation into the deal.

“It’s not just a matter of the Guards dominating the economy, but of controlling the state,” said Alireza Nader, an expert on Iran and co-author of a comprehensive RAND Corporation report on the Revolutionary Guards.

The Guards was created as an elite military force at the founding of the Islamic republic, but its broad mandate — to protect the revolution — has allowed it to reach far beyond its military capacity and evolve into the nation’s most powerful political and economic force.

Its ability to enhance its status even further since the election has important implications for the future of Iran’s domestic politics, decisions on its nuclear program and prospects for long-term relations with the West, said Iranian analysts inside and outside of the country. Increasingly, it is the interests of the Guards and its allies that are driving the nation’s policies, and those interests have often been defined by isolation from the West.

“I think they really see themselves comfortable in a situation where they are isolated and in control,” said Michael Axworthy, a lecturer in Middle Eastern and Iranian history at the University of Exeter in England.

But as its role expands deep into society, the Guards also finds itself forced to balance its ideological inclinations with the practical aspects of protecting its own interests, the analysts said. For example, Iran has refrained from criticizing China, an important trade partner, over its crackdown on Uighurs, a Muslim minority.

And with inflation over 20 percent and manufacturing in serious decline, the Guards and its allies have appeared ready to take steps to head off new sanctions over the nation’s nuclear program. The Guards oversees the nuclear and missile program, and the recently revealed enrichment plant near Qum is built into a mountain on a Guards base.

“A lot of it is about ideology, but a lot of it is about money, too,” Mr. Nader said.

The election in June set off a wave of protests and national discontent, with many charging that the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stole the election from his main reform opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi. That conflict and the ensuing state crackdown accelerated a reordering of Iran’s political landscape that began with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s election four years ago. The old guard revolutionaries, like former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the reformers and the clergy have been largely shoved aside. The mainline conservatives have been divided.

But the Guards and its allies, including the president, have been emboldened and remain firmly in control. There have been some student protests since universities reopened, and small street scuffles, but nothing like the huge protests that rocked the nation right after the election.

“In a strategic sense, I don’t think Iran is in a fundamentally different place than it was before elections, not in the way it approaches negotiations or the way it looks at its foreign policy,” said Flynt Leverett, director of the Iran project at the New America Foundation and a professor of international affairs at Pennsylvania State University.

Since the protests, senior Guards officials and former officials have been moved into many important government positions. There is now talk that the Guards’ leadership is considering transforming the Basij militia, a volunteer force under its command, into a professional, full-time force. Another tool for extending the Guards’ reach at home has been privatization, initially intended as a means to improve the economy but criticized more recently as a shell game.

The takeover of Iran’s telecommunications system followed a familiar pattern. A private firm, initially approved by Iran’s Privatization Organization, was excluded as an eligible bidder because of a “security condition” one day before shares were put on sale. Mobin Trust Consortium, affiliated with the Guards, then won the bidding.

Until this case, the most striking instance of the Guards’ muscling into a business involved management of the Imam Khomeini Airport. In May 2004 the Guards shut down the airport and evicted the Turkish company that had the contract to run it. The Guards then put its own firm in place. The Guards also appears to have defied an edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to privatize its many holdings, which run from laser eye clinics and car dealerships to control of oil and gas fields, according to the RAND report.

Despite this and other instances of apparent defiance, Iranian analysts said that the supreme leader remained close to and was supported by the Revolutionary Guards, and that he had maintained control in part by frequently changing commanders. The ayatollah sided publicly with Mr. Ahmadinejad in the political crisis, damaging his standing as a fair arbiter, and so he has relied more on security services, primarily the Guards, to preserve his authority.

Parliament’s decision to look into the telecommunications deal is its second inquiry into a privatization transaction. The first involved three companies affiliated with the Basij militia. In August they simultaneously bid to control the largest lead and zinc mine in the Middle East, in Iran’s Zanjan Province. The final sale price was less than $2 billion, one-third of the $6 billion the government had said the mine was worth two years earlier.

During the investigation, auditors found evidence that the three sister companies colluded to ensure the lowest possible price, according to Iranian newspaper reports.

Some analysts argue that the Guards, with a firm control of major sectors of the economy, has little interest in opening relations with the West, because integration with the global economy could bring in competition and require a degree of transparency the force is not comfortable with.

“They profit by a situation in which there are sanctions and shortages and in which the people can’t get what they want, and they are able to control a fairly small stream of what the people want at an inflated price,” Mr. Axworthy said. “I don’t think the Revolutionary Guard is very likely to put pressure on the Iranian regime to open politically in order to open economically.”

But there is also a sentiment that says the Guards Corps may become more pragmatic when it comes to the rest of the world.

“The I.R.G.C. can’t be both a revolutionary and militant organization, bent on destroying the world and exporting the revolution, and at the same time a big domestic capitalist agency with its finger in a bunch of pies,” said a sociologist in Iran who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “Being the latter moves one towards conservatism and pragmatism, not radicalism.”

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.

General Calls for Mousavi, Khatami, Karroubi Prosecution

As Iran moves to squelch opposition to the disputed June presidential election, the stage has been set for the judiciary to try two defeated candidates and a former president.

A senior official with Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on Sunday accused Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two defeated candidates whose supporters took to the streets to protest the official vote result, as well as former President Mohammad Khatami of inciting the unrest.

Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, head of the IRGC's political bureau, said it was absolutely vital to defend the integrity of the 30-year-old Islamic Revolution amidst a “Western-backed plot to topple the government through a 'velvet coup',” the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Monday.

"The question is who were the main plotters and agents of this coup. What is the role of Khatami, Mousavi and Karroubi in this coup?" he wrote in an article in the weekly IRGC journal.

The official outcome of the presidential vote, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win by a massive margin, provoked unprecedented, widespread protests.

The crackdown against the street demonstrations resulted in the arrest of thousands of opposition figures, protesters and journalists -- who have been put on trial on charges of plotting to topple the government --, and the deaths of at least 30 people.

During their hearings in the Revolutionary Court, many of the defendants have confessed to aiding foreign countries in the post-vote developments.

Iranian authorities blame world powers, particularly Britain and the US, for the turmoil, and accuse them of instigating the unrest in line with staging a “velvet revolution” in the country.

The trials have raised the ire of the opposition with their public symbols, Mousavi and Khatami, terming the prosecution as a “sham” and claiming the confessions were extracted under torture.

However, the IRGC official believes the affirmation of guilt can be used by the judiciary to convict those who are truly to blame for the “failed coup.”

“If Mousavi, Khatami, [Ayatollah Mohammad] Mousavi Khoeiniha (Iran's prosecutor general after the victory of the revolution in 1979) and Karroubi are the main suspects believed to have been behind the velvet coup in Iran, which they are, we expect the judiciary ... to go after them, arrest them, put them on trial and punish them according to the law,” Javani was quoted by IRNA as saying.

The remarks also echo increasing pressure by the ruling system on the opposition who alleges that the June 12 election was rigged and continues to defy the result.

The vote, hailed by President Ahmadinejad and the Guardian Council, the body tasked with overseeing elections, as the “healthiest” vote in the history of the Revolution, has also presented an influential critic.

Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the head of the Assembly of Experts and Chairman of the Expediency Council, has denounced the government's handling of the controversy over the election and urged officials to release the protesters still in custody.

However, Rafsanjani, who is to deliver a sermon at the Tehran University prayer hall on Friday, has been harshly criticized for his stance by supporters of President Ahmadinejad and a number of officials in the Principlist camp.

An Iranian lawmaker, Nasrollah Torbai, on Sunday moved to quiet the criticism by boasting the credentials of Ayatollah Rafsanjani and the leaders of the opposition.

“It has taken years and a vast amount of political capital has been spent on the likes of Mousavi, Hashemi-[Rafsanjani], Khatami, Karroubi and [Hojjatoleslam Ali-Akbar] Nateq-Nouri to grow and serve the Revolution,” Torabi was quoted by Parleman News website as saying.

“Why is it that the trust of the people is not regarded as the most valuable treasure in the country?” he queried.

Ayatollah Rafsanjani had said during his Friday Prayers sermon on July 17 that the ambiguities surrounding the presidential election had led to the distrust of the Iranian nation in the establishment.

"Doubt has been created," he said. "There are two currents; one has no doubt and is moving ahead. And the other is a large portion of the wise people who say they have doubts. We need to take action to remove this doubt."

MD/HGH

Iranian Leaders Urge Protections for Detained Protesters

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 28, 2009

TEHRAN, July 27 -- Top Iranian leaders on Monday called for greater protection for opposition demonstrators arrested during this summer's protests after at least three were reported in recent days to have died in custody.

The calls reflect concern, even among Iran's ruling elite, that some of those detained are being mistreated by officials and groups operating under the authority of the powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has taken an ever larger role in Iranian affairs since protests over June's disputed presidential election triggered a massive crackdown.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking through his representative on the National Security Council, called Monday for criminal acts to be handled through proper legal channels. Khamenei ordered the closure of a substandard prison facility and reminded officials that "criminal acts should be confronted by government bodies only within the framework of the law and no one can deny the legal rights of any individual," the representative, Saeed Jalili, quoted Khamenei as saying, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency.

Meanwhile, Iran's judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, ordered the Tehran prosecutor to decide within a week the fate of protesters detained after the election, his spokesman told the Mehr News Agency. He also called for the quick release of those who have not committed serious crimes.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps, the 125,000-strong military force that also commands the volunteer Basij militia, took control of Tehran's security in the aftermath of the election. Politicians inside and outside the government have said they believe that the Revolutionary Guard has also taken the lead in handling detained protesters, and that the traditional justice system has been circumvented.

"The police and the Intelligence Ministry have said that they're not at the center of this and are not aware of who is responsible," said Hamid Reza Katouzian, a member of a parliamentary commission researching the arrests, according to the semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency. "Those who've created such a security environment and have been going forward with military force need to be held responsible."

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate who leads the opposition, echoed those comments Monday. "I'm sure the Justice Ministry cannot and does not have the right to visit many of the prisons," he said, according to Ghalam News, run by his supporters.

He and other protest leaders have asked the Interior Ministry for permission to hold a silent commemoration service Thursday, which marks the 40th day after the violent death of Neda Agha Soltan, whose final moments were captured on video and broadcast around the world. Officials say 20 protesters and seven Basij members were killed during the demonstrations. Human rights groups say the toll was far higher.

Concern for prisoners comes amid shock within Iran's political elite over the death in custody of a protester who was the son of a former top adviser in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

Mohsen Rouholamini, a computer programming student who was in his 20s, was arrested July 9 during a large anti-government demonstration. Twelve days later, his family members were told they could pick up his body. Hossein Alaei, a retired Revolutionary Guard commander and friend of the Rouholamini family, wrote a dramatic open letter published on Nowruznews, a Web site close to the opposition, conveying the words of Abdolhussein Rouholamini, the father.

"When I saw his body I noticed that they had crushed his mouth. My son was an honest person. He wouldn't lie. I'm sure that he's given correct answers to anything they'd asked him," the letter said. "They probably couldn't stand his honesty and beat him until he died under torture."

Revolutionary Guards Crush Dissent and Widen Control in Iran

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — As Iran’s political elite and clerical establishment splinter over the election crisis, the nation’s most powerful economic, social and political institution — the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — has emerged as a driving force behind efforts to crush a still-defiant opposition movement.

From its origin 30 years ago as an ideologically driven militia force serving Islamic revolutionary leaders, the corps has grown to assume an increasingly assertive role in virtually every aspect of Iranian society.

And its aggressive drive to silence dissenting views has led many political analysts to describe the events surrounding the June 12 presidential election as a military coup.

“It is not a theocracy anymore,” said Rasool Nafisi, an expert in Iranian affairs and a co-author of an exhaustive study of the corps for the RAND Corporation. “It is a regular military security government with a facade of a Shiite clerical system.”

The corps has become a vast military-based conglomerate, with control of Iran’s missile batteries, oversight of its nuclear program and a multibillion-dollar business empire reaching into nearly every sector of the economy. It runs laser eye-surgery clinics, manufactures cars, builds roads and bridges, develops gas and oil fields and controls black-market smuggling, experts say.

Its fortune and its sense of entitlement have reportedly grown under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since 2005, when he took office, companies affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards have been awarded more than 750 government contracts in construction and oil and gas projects, Iranian press reports document. And all of its finances stay off the budget, free from any state oversight or need to provide an accounting to Parliament.

The corps’s alumni hold dozens of seats in Parliament and top government posts. Mr. Ahmadinejad is a former member, as are the speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, and the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. And the influence of the Revolutionary Guards reaches deep into the education system, where it indoctrinates students in loyalty to the state, and into the state-controlled media, where it guides television and radio programming.

“They are the proponents of an authoritarian modernization, convinced that the clergy should continue supplying the legitimation for the regime as a sort of military chaplains, but definitely not run the show,” said a political scientist who worked in Iran for years, but asked not to be identified to avoid antagonizing the authorities.

They are so influential partly because they present a public front of unity in a state where power has always been fractured. By contrast, clerics have many different agendas and factions. Nonetheless, there are glimmers of fractures under the corps’s opaque and disciplined surface.

Political analysts said that behind the scenes there were internal disagreements about the handling of the election and the demonstrations against disputed results that gave a second term to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“I have received reports, at least part of the top commanders in the Revolutionary Guards are not happy with what is going on,” said Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California, who says he has a network of contacts around the country. “There are even reports of some who have protested.”

Even a former commander in the corps, Mohsen Rezai, who served for 16 years, decided to challenge the status quo by running for president this year, and he openly complained of the government’s failure to investigate accusations of vote-rigging.

One political analyst said that many of the rank and file were known to have voted for Mohammad Khatami, an outspoken reformer, when he was first elected president in 1997.

The corps is not large. It has as many as 130,000 members and runs five armed branches that are independent from the much bigger national military. It commands its own ground force, navy, air force and intelligence service. The United Nations Security Council has linked its officials to Iran’s nuclear program. The West suspects Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons, an allegation the government denies.

The corps’s two best-known subsidiaries are the secretive Quds Force, which has carried out operations in other countries, including the training and arming of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon; and the Basij militia. The Basiji, who experts say were incorporated under the corps’s leadership only two years ago, now include millions of volunteer vigilantes used to crack down on election protests and dissidents.

Members of the Revolutionary Guards and their families receive privileged status at every level, which benefits them in university admissions and in the distribution of subsidized commodities, experts said.

Mr. Nafisi, the RAND report co-author, said a former commander in the corps estimated that all the corps and Basiji members, together with their families, added up to a potential voting bloc of millions of people. “This new machinery of election was quite important in bringing Ahmadinejad forward,” Mr. Nafisi said.

Within this bloc is a core of military elites who have displaced — and at times clashed with — the clerical revolutionaries who worked beside Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in founding the Islamic republic. They are the second generation of revolutionaries, ideologically united and contemptuous of first-generation clerics like former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and of reformers and those eager to engage with the West. The corps has even trained its own clerics.

In an essay describing the rise of the Revolutionary Guards phenomenon, Professor Sahimi drew a portrait of the new elite: leaders in their mid-50s who as young men joined the corps and fought two wars: one against Iraq in the 1980s and another to force out the Mujahedeen Khalq, which the United States considers a terrorist organization and which is now based in Iraq.

The corps then split into two groups. One believed that Iran needed a chance to develop politically and socially; the other, which emerged the victor, was intent on maintaining strict control. Mr. Nafisi said Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was close to that second group.

“He went to the war front several times, more than any other commander,” Mr. Nafisi said. “He made personal contact with many commanders, got to know them and earned their loyalty. Now all the people in charge were basically assigned to him at the time of war.”

Today, the corps has expanded its role and reach. Its financial interests have, for example, been linked directly to the government’s foreign policy. Iran may well have remained silent on the attacks on Uighur Muslims in China this month in part because Beijing is one of the main trading partners with the corps.

Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war, Mr. Rafsanjani, then the president, encouraged the corps to use its engineers to bolster its own budget and to help rebuild the country. Since then, a Revolutionary Guards company, Khatam al-Anbia, has become one of Iran’s largest contractors in industrial and development projects, according to the RAND report. Its contracts with the government, including projects like the construction of a Tehran subway line, hydroelectric dams, ports and railway systems, are carried out by the company’s subsidiaries or are parceled out to private companies.

What is less quantifiable is the corps’s black-market smuggling activity, which has helped feed the nation’s appetite for products banned by sanctions, while also enriching the corps. The Rand report quoted one member of Iran’s Parliament who estimated that the Revolutionary Guards might do as much as $12 billion in black-market business annually.

In his will, Ayatollah Khomeini asked that the military stay out of politics, and senior Revolutionary Guards officials have been careful to defend themselves against accusations of political meddling after the June 12 election. But Gen. Yadollah Javani, director of the corps’s political arm, warned the public that there was no room for dissent.

“Today, no one is impartial,” he said, according to the official news agency IRNA. “There are two currents: those who defend and support the revolution and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it.”

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

As Ahmadinejad Tightens Grip in Iran, Mousavi Faces Tough Choices

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 29, 2009

TEHRAN, June 28 -- With the opposition visibly weakening in Iran amid a government crackdown, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters have begun to use his disputed victory in this month's election to toughen the nation's stance internationally and to consolidate control internally.

In recent days, they have vilified President Obama for what they call his "interventionist policies," have said they are ready to put opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's advisers on trial and have threatened to execute some of the Mousavi supporters who took to the streets to protest the election result.

On Sunday, news agencies reported that the police broke up another opposition gathering -- witnesses said it numbered about 2,000 -- and detained eight British Embassy staff members, accusing them of a role in organizing the demonstrations.

The actions reflect the growing power of a small coterie of hard-line clerics and Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, Iranian analysts say. Revolutionary Guard members, in particular, have proved instrumental to the authorities since the June 12 election, and analysts say their clout is bound to increase as the conflict drags on.

The emerging power dynamics leave Mousavi with tough choices. Confronted with increasing political pressure over what supporters of the government say is his leading role in orchestrating riots, he can either acknowledge his defeat and be embraced by his enemies or continue to fight over the election result and face imprisonment.

"Everything now depends on Mousavi," said Amir Mohebbian, a political analyst. "If he decreases the tension, politicians can manage this. If he increases pressure, the influence of the military and security forces will grow."

Should he continue to fight, other analysts say, Mousavi and many of his advisers could be jailed, which would mean the end of their political influence within Iran's ruling system. The exclusion of such a large group would end Iran's traditional power-sharing system. Authority would rest in the hands of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and his supporters, leaving the parliament as the lone outpost of opposition voices.

On the other hand, accepting defeat might allow Mousavi to create a political party that, although unable to challenge the rule of Khamenei, could give him an opposition role during Ahmadinejad's second term. Mousavi's supporters, who are still enraged over post-election violence that they blame on the government, would be extremely disappointed by such a move.

The one possible wild card in Mousavi's favor seems to be coming from the holy city of Qom, one of the most influential centers of Shiite learning. There, several powerful grand ayatollahs have issued statements calling for a compromise and, most tellingly, have not joined Khamenei in his unequivocal support of Ahmadinejad.

"Events that happened have weakened the system," Grand Ayatollah Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardabili said during a meeting with members of the Guardian Council, the semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency reported Saturday. "You must hear the objections that the protesters have to the elections. We must let the people speak."

Another grand ayatollah issued two fatwas, or religious edicts, on Saturday, saying Islam forbids security forces from hitting unarmed people. Grand Ayatollah Asadollah Bayat Zanjani said the protests were Islamic. "These gatherings are the lawful right of the people and their only method for informing the rulers of their requests," he said.

Mousavi and another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, have vehemently refused to recognize the election results, which officially gave Ahmadinejad a landslide victory. They have also declined to participate in recount efforts by the Guardian Council, which must certify the final results Monday but which the opposition insists is biased.

Their refusal plays into the hands of the president's camp, which, strongly supported by state media, has launched a campaign against Mousavi, the protesters and his advisers. According to the official narrative of this campaign, opposition unrest was fomented by Iran's foreign enemies -- including the United States, Great Britain and Saudi Arabia -- in an attempt to overthrow the regime.

The Iranian government and its allies are gearing up to use those accusations to bring to court some political opponents, a move aimed at silencing the opposition for a longer period, analysts here say. The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights said Sunday that more than 2,000 people are in detention and that hundreds more have gone missing since the election.

"We are very worried about my husband's fate," said Mahdieh Mohammadi, wife of journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi, a government critic. He was arrested the day after the election. "When you know nothing at all for the past two weeks, naturally you start to worry about everything."

State media have rolled out a daily serving of alleged plots and conspiracies involving Mousavi supporters. They refer to the protesters as "rioters" and "hooligans." Mousavi's aides are linked to plans for "a velvet revolution" meant to overthrow Iran's complex system of religious and democratic governance. Some demonstrators have been forced to make televised statements in which they admit to being the pawns of foreigners.

The head of the parliament's judicial commission has said that Mousavi could be put on trial. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a staunch ally of Iran's supreme leader, called Friday for "severe and ruthless" punishments for the "leaders of the agitations," asking the judiciary to try them as those who "wage war against God." Such crimes are punishable by death under Iran's Shiite Islamic law.

Khamenei has said that those organizing the "riots" will be held responsible for the "violence and bloodshed." He has openly supported Ahmadinejad, breaking with the Islamic republic's tradition of the supreme leader being above the fray.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose power mushroomed after the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, is in position to gain even more sway in the government. The 120,000-member corps acts as a praetorian guard, protecting Iran's Islamic ruling system, and its commanders are close to top Iranian leaders. In recent years, the corps has added divisions, expanded its intelligence operations, helped professionalize the voluntary militia known as the Basij and taken greater control of the borders.

"We are now in a security situation. That is increasing their influence," said Mohebbian, the analyst, who is critical of both main presidential candidates. "Mousavi's extremist actions have made it easy for military people to get involved in politics, which is always bad for democracy."

Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an Ahmadinejad rival who supported Mousavi, on Sunday broke his post-election silence and called for an investigation into complaints of election irregularities.

"I hope those who are involved in this issue thoroughly and fairly review and study the legal complaints," Rafsanjani said.

Special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie in Tehran contributed to this report.