Roughly one-third of the world’s seaborne crude passes through the Strait of Hormuz each year, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps patrols its waters. That one fact explains why families from Manila to Mumbai, who feel every swing in fuel prices, have reason to know the name.
The IRGC is not Iran’s army. It sits beside it. After the 1979 revolution, the clerics who took power distrusted the traditional armed services and built the Guards as a counterweight, outside the regular chain of command. The Council on Foreign Relations describes a command structure that answers to the supreme leader and bypasses the elected president. Ayatollah Khomeini wanted a force that could shield the new order from a coup like the one in 1953, which toppled Mohammed Mossadeq and put the shah back on his throne.
How big it is
The International Institute for Strategic Studies puts the Guards at upward of 190,000 troops, about half of them conscripts. Ground forces, spread over Iran’s 31 provinces and Tehran, number more than 150,000. The Basij paramilitary claims it can call up some six hundred thousand volunteers. The naval branch, separate from the regular navy, has about twenty thousand sailors. The air force, also separate, has fifteen thousand personnel and runs the ballistic missile program. A cyber command handles espionage and propaganda.
The Iran-Iraq War of 1980 to 1988 turned the Guards from a revolutionary militia into something closer to a conventional army. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei led the corps during that war, and as CFR notes, he later placed former commanders in senior political posts. Many veterans now sit in the cabinet, parliament and the provinces. The corps has also made billions of dollars through commercial and financial networks built to get around sanctions.
The Quds Force and the network abroad
Beyond Iran’s borders, the work belongs to the Quds Force. It began sponsoring armed groups in the 1980s and now supplies training, weapons, money and military advice to partners in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Yemen. After the 2011 uprisings it deployed to Syria, first as a limited mission, then openly to help Bashar al-Assad put down unrest.
A U.S. drone strike in January 2020 killed its longtime commander Qasem Soleimani. Today the Quds Force is led by Gen. Esmail Qaani. On June 8 of this year he described a “security belt” for what Iran calls the Axis of Resistance, running from the Strait of Hormuz to the Bab el-Mandeb and from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, according to the Middle East Institute.
Where it stands now
The past year has been brutal for the corps. Israeli strikes in June 2025 killed its head, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami. CFR says its reported role in the suppression of mass protests in January 2026 drew condemnation from the United States and the European Union. Then came the war that began on February 28, 2026. The Middle East Institute reports that Khamenei was killed in an Israeli strike at its onset, that Hezbollah entered the fighting under the banner of avenging him, and that Iraqi militias attacked U.S. forces and interests across Iraq, Syria, Jordan and the Gulf. Iran, for its part, closed the Strait of Hormuz and kept it shut despite heavy damage to its navy and air force.
About 20% of the world’s oil supply moves through that strait.
Sources
- The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) | Council on Foreign Relations
- Iran's New Grand Design: The Next Evolution of the Axis of Resistance – Middle East Institute
