Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Emergence of the Guards
2.1. Not One, But Several Guards
2.2. Unification of the Guards, Institutionalization
of Factionalism
Notes
3. The Revolutionary G uards’ Role in Domestic Politics
3.1. Legal Framework
3.2. A History of Politicization
3.3. Conclusion
Notes
4. The IRGC as an Internal Security Organization in
Contemporary Iran
4.1. Formal Merger of the IRGC with the Basij
4.2. The Mosaic Doctrine
4.3. Conclusion
Notes
5. Collapse of the Commissariat
5.1. Legal Framework
5.2. Early History and Establishment
5.3. Khomeini’s Commissars
5.4. Khamenei’s Commissars
5.5. Conclusion
Notes
6. Dysfunctional Ideological/Political Indoctrination
in the IRGC
6.1. The Legal Framework and Institutions
6.2. Early Attempts at Ideological/Political Indoctrination
in the IRGC
6.3. Indoctrinating to Intervene
6.4. Contradictions and Implications
6.5. Conclusion
Notes
7. The Economic Empire of the IRGC
7.1. Twisting of the Legal Framework
7.2. From Military Industries to the Production of
Consumer Goods
7.3. From Social Housing to Real Estate Speculation
in Dubai
7.4. The IRGC as a Contractor: Enemy of the
Private Sector
7.5. Chain Stores of the Guards: Competition with the
Traditional Bazaar
7.6. The IRGC and Telecommunications: Elimination of
Domestic and Foreign Competition
7.7. The IRGC and the Oil and Gas Sector
7.8. The IRGC on the Tehran Stock Exchange
7.9. The IRGC and Smuggling
7.10. Conclusion
Notes
8. The Revolutionary Guards and the Export
of the Revolution
8.1. The Ideological Foundations of the Export of
the Revolution
8.2. Practical Foundations of the Export of the Revolution:
Iranian Revolutionaries as Members of a World
Revolutionary Movement
8.3. Export of the Revolution as a National Security Doctrine
and an Instrument of Domestic Power Struggle
vi IRAN’S REVOLUNTIONARY GUARDS
8.4. Exporting the Revolution
8.5. Conclusion
Notes
9. Conclusion
Index
About the Author

About the Author

Ali Alfoneh's research areas include civil-military relations in Iran with a special focus on the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the Islamic Republic. Mr. Alfoneh has been a research fellow at the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defence College and has taught political economy at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.

Reviews

This book is essential reading for students of Iranian politics and history and paramilitary organizations. Alfoneh (senior fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies) contends that the Pasdaran, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has suppressed ideological heresy alongside its security operations, expanded its power and influence in the country. As a state within a state, he argues, the IRGC could hold the clerics hostage. The book explains the IRGC's origins and outlines its destruction of governmental oversight, its enhanced economic power, and ways it foiled political foes. Alfoneh covers some of the same ground as Emanuele Ottolenghi, Steven O'Hern, and the Rand Corporation's 2008 IRGC study. The book concentrates on the pre-2010 period, not on IRCG's international activities or specifics of the IRCG's subcontracting businesses. The hyped 'military dictatorship' of the title is more of a diffuse subcontracting process. Nonetheless, Alfoneh exposes the IRGC's networks and methods. The IRGC retained its importance under then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As President Hassan Rouhani called in August 2013 for reductions to the IRGC's size, and IRGC cabinet members have decreased, it is not yet clear if the trends and patterns Alfoneh explores are permanent political features or transient. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels.
*CHOICE*