On 14th March of 2022, Iran’s state-run news outlets circulated official reports of an announcement on the arrest of a team planning sabotage acts at the Fordow Nuclear Facility in Iran. What has been overlooked by the international community within this report is the first official confirmation of Iran’s terrorist designated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, establishing a command center tasked with protecting the country’s nuclear facilities and its nuclear program.
To understand the seriousness of this development, one must be reminded of the IRGC’s history along with the influence this terrorist organization has inside Iran.
The IRGC originally founded by Iran’s first supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini and tasked with merely protecting the country’s political system, although strictly forbidden to enter politics, for more than four decades and immediately after its inception has only had one goal in mind, which is to essentially control every imaginable area, sector, industry, and system within the country.
After more than four decades of infighting, conflicts, assassinations, abductions, forgery, deception, and corruption, the IRGC is closer than ever to reaching its grand dream, and in fact, has already established control over the country’s most crucial areas.
The IRGC now has complete control over Iran’s engineering, mechanical engineering, energy, mining, and defense industries through its engineering arm, the Khatam al-Anbiya construction headquarters and essentially controls most of Iran’s dams, water diversion systems; highways; tunnels; and water, gas, and oil main pipelines as it has been the only contractor allowed to build them for decades.
Having appointed dozens of active and former high-ranking commanders within Iran’s parliament, judiciary, municipalities, governorates, councils, and presidential cabinet, it has also established firm control over Iran’s internal affairs and politics.
As it was highlighted by Iran’s former foreign minister in a leaked audio file last year, the IRGC also controls Iran’s foreign policy with its extraterritorial operations arm, the Quds Force, dictating every decision Iran’s foreign ministry makes.
The Quds force is also responsible for funding, arming, and commanding dozens of proxy militia groups across the globe and has had countless well-documented assassinations, abductions, and terrorist attacks abroad.
The IRGC has also completely overshadowed Iran’s army and has managed to allocate a budget many times bigger than the army to itself, currently possessing superior technology and influence within Iran’s armed forces. Iran’s Intelligence Ministry has also suffered the same fate after years of rivalry with the IRGC Intelligence Organization.
The most recent development in IRGC’s roadmap towards complete control was the announcement of the draconian “Regulatory System for Cyberspace Services Bill,” which places Iran’s Internet infrastructure and Internet gateways under the control of the IRGC.
With a better understanding of IRGC’s history and influence in Iran, the threat of this terrorist organization being in charge and closer than ever to Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear sites may be better understood.
What makes this development even more alarming is rumors that the United States might lift the sanctions imposed on IRGC in order to close a nuclear deal with Iran which would be devastating to the regional and ultimately global peace efforts.