On Saturday, because the United States and Israel attacked Iran, US President Donald Trump despatched a message to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) conscripts, demanding they give up or die.
“To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity,” Trump stated. “Or in the alternative, face certain death. So, lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.”
Instead, they retaliated with drone and missile assaults on Israel and multiple Arab states that host US belongings within the area. Early on Sunday morning, Iranian state tv introduced that one of many strikes on Tehran killed its longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
If Trump’s enchantment to the IRGC was geared toward inspiring defections or abdications, it doesn’t appear to have had the supposed impact. So why did Trump’s name for the IRGC to put down their arms fall on deaf ears?
Here’s the whole lot you might want to know:
What is the IRGC
It is an elite armed drive and a constitutionally recognised element of the Iranian army, established in 1979 after the Islamic revolution. It operates alongside the nation’s common military however solutions on to the supreme chief.
In reality, its doctrine is constructed on velayat-e faqih, or guardianship of the Islamic jurist, primarily the safety of the Islamic revolution and its fealty to the supreme spiritual chief, initially Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989 and was succeeded by Khamenei.
It consists of floor, naval and air forces troops and consists of an inside safety paramilitary militia referred to as Basij. It additionally has an exterior operations drive known as the Quds Force, which is concentrated on particular operations outdoors Iranian territory.
What does the IRGC do?
It performs a key function in Iran’s defence, overseas operations and regional affect with its 190,000 or so lively personnel and a complete of 600,000 if reserves are included. The IRGC manages Iran’s ballistic missile programme, is chargeable for safety for the nation’s nuclear programme and coordinates with its regional allies in what’s described because the “axis of resistance”.
The IRGC has been closely sanctioned by varied states. The US designated it an FTO (overseas terrorist organisation) in 2019. The European Union did the identical in February 2026, prompting Tehran to reply by naming all EU member states, naval and air forces, as terrorist organisations the identical month.
The IRGC, nevertheless, can be deeply entrenched in Iran’s political and financial buildings. Its financial function expanded through the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq warfare, because it dealt with engineering and logistics to maintain Iran’s warfare effort. Firms affiliated with the IRGC reportedly have contracts in key sectors corresponding to Iran’s pure assets, transport, infrastructure, telecommunications, and mining. Iranian officers name this the “resistance economy” and say that is a part of how the nation has circumvented sanctions.
What is the Basij?
Also based by Khomeini in 1979, the Basij is a volunteer paramilitary drive that falls below the IRGC and enlists civilians motivated by their devotion to the nation, although some analysts say younger males additionally join privileges and financial betterment.
The group is taken into account to be deeply ideological, typically made up of younger, working-class males. There are an estimated 450,000 personnel within the group, in keeping with the Institute for the Study of War, although that additionally consists of members who handle the group’s communications and sociocultural programmes.
Basij personnel are sometimes deployed on the entrance strains of protests and have performed a big function in countering uprisings in opposition to the federal government lately, together with the 2009 Green Revolution and the 2022-23 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
During the Iran-Iraq warfare, Basij members volunteered and had been deployed to the entrance strains. They had been inspired to undertake “martyrdom missions”, whereby they’d clear minefields in “human waves” to clear the battlefield for extra skilled troopers to advance.
Will they hearken to Trump?
In quick, it appears the reply isn’t any.
Michael Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defence (DASD) for the Middle East, informed Al Jazeera: “In Iran, you have the supreme leader, of course, but there are multiple different power centres in the clerical, in the military, in the IRGC, in the intelligence service. They are unlikely to comply with what President Trump has done, and Israel.”
“Everything that they are saying right now, including recent statements from [Ali] Larijani, is that they intend to escalate this and essentially turn the region into an all-out war, causing as much pain not only to the United States but also against the Gulf countries in the region,” Mulroy stated, referring to the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran.
Ideology and loyalty to the Islamic revolution and the supreme chief are key ideological tenets of the IRGC. But even past that, the financial and social energy that many members obtain makes it unlikely {that a} mass abdication will happen.
In reality, some analysts consider the newest assaults on Iran and the assassination of Khamenei may even increase the IRGC’s management over the Iranian state.
Director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, Jonathan Panikoff, stated an finish of the present regime in Iran is much less prone to result in a democracy than a “military-controlled state that might offer a new supreme leader as a symbolic token to millions of conservative Iranians, but with power firmly vested in the hands” of the IRGC.
Will Trump’s promise have any impression after Khamenei’s dying?
That appears unlikely.
The IRGC remains to be very possible in management, regardless of a turbulent yr for Iran.
After Israel’s warfare on Iran in 2025, the federal government grappled with relaxing social freedoms and appointing advisers to succeed in the nation’s youth in an effort to enhance nationwide morale and ease public discontent.
Still, in January, Iran erupted in antigovernment protests, with analysts saying financial hardships from years of sanctions and authorities mismanagement had been a key trigger.
In phrases of the group’s organisational capability, it changed the leaders assassinated through the 2025 warfare with Israel. And throughout that point, Khamenei additionally reportedly appointed three potential successors and named a collection of replacements all through the army chain of command.
