When the international community engages with Tehran, it repeatedly commits a fundamental methodological error. Western diplomats and analysts treat the Islamic Republic as a conventional nation-state driven by national interest, borders, and civil welfare. This is a dangerous illusion.
The Islamic Republic is a transnational revolutionary movement that captured Iran’s geography and resources, transforming a historic nation into a command headquarters to export fundamentalist ideology. At its core sits the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The IRGC does not merely serve the regime; the IRGC is the regime.
The constitutional betrayal
This regime operates as an anti-national occupying force. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic explicitly defines the military’s mission as fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad to extend God’s law globally, supporting “the struggles of the oppressed against the oppressors in every corner of the globe.”
Strikingly, the Constitution does not even require the Supreme Leader to be an Iranian citizen. From inception, ruling clerics have viewed Iran not as a homeland, but as a captured prize of war to bankroll a global insurgency.
The birth of a parallel army
To understand how this entity devoured Iran, one must look back to the 1979 revolution. An alliance of leftists, followers of Mohammad Mosaddegh (notably the Liberation Movement of Iran), and Islamists shared a profound paranoia toward the Shah’s Western-oriented military.
Amid this distrust, Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi, then-deputy prime minister, proposed creating an ideologically loyal paramilitary force to protect the revolution.
Thus, the IRGC was born. The word “Islamic” in its title was a deliberate declaration: its mission was never to defend Iranian borders, but to protect the theological survival of the regime. The Islamists quickly seized absolute control and systematically purged their naive allies.
Devouring the state: The parallel bureaucracy
Realizing that the modern bureaucracy built during the Pahlavi era was incompatible with its revolutionary mission, the regime constructed a comprehensive “parallel state” within the IRGC that gradually hollowed out every official organ:
• The regular military (Artesh): The IRGC established parallel armed branches, starving the conventional military of resources.
• The national police: The regime unleashed the Basij paramilitary force to enforce social control and crush internal dissent outside statutory law.
• Intelligence: The regime empowered the IRGC Intelligence Organization (SAS), which grew into the country’s most ruthless security arm.
• Economy: The IRGC established Khatam al-Anbiya, a massive financial cartel monopolizing major infrastructure, oil, gas, and construction.
• Foreign Policy: Regional diplomacy was handed entirely to the IRGC’s Quds Force, with Quds commanders serving as ambassadors to key regional capitals.
Exporting the nucleus: The creation of Hezbollah
The ultimate manifestation of this ideology is the regime’s proxy network. For a revolutionary movement, national borders are arbitrary. This worldview is perfectly illustrated by the genesis of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
In a supreme historical irony, this project was orchestrated by Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, a figure later championed as an Iranian “Reformist.” Serving as Iran’s ambassador to Syria (1981–1985), his explicit directive was to plant Khomeinist ideology in Lebanon.
At the time, the Amal Movement was the mainstream Lebanese Shi’ite force and showed no desire for Tehran’s ideology. Utilizing limitless IRGC cash and weapons, Mohtashamipur engineered a bloody internal schism within Amal.
Radical factions loyal to Khomeini were armed to eliminate moderate rivals. From the ashes of this engineered civil war, Hezbollah emerged; not as an indigenous Lebanese party, but as the IRGC’s first foreign franchise.
The global criminal cartel: Hezbollah as the IRGC’s hitman
Beyond Lebanon, Hezbollah evolved into the IRGC’s global hitman and transnational criminal syndicate. Operating across Europe, West Africa, and Latin America, it runs a shadow empire of drug trafficking, money laundering, and smuggling.
Whenever Tehran requires plausible deniability, it deploys Hezbollah for political assassinations, bombings, and hostage-taking. From targeting dissidents on European soil to training regional proxies like the Houthis, Hezbollah functions as a heavily armed mafia cartel executing the wet-work of its handlers in Tehran.
Atrocities on the home front and abroad
Hezbollah’s loyalty to the IRGC is written in civilian blood. When Iranians rose up in nationwide anti-regime protests, the IRGC deployed Arabic-speaking Hezbollah mercenaries onto Iranian streets. These foreign hitmen brutally suppressed and shot young Iranian protesters, feeling no cultural connection to the people.
Abroad, Hezbollah acted as Bashar al-Assad’s executioner during the Syrian civil war. Under IRGC command, Hezbollah committed systematic war crimes, starving Sunni towns, conducting sectarian massacres, and ethnically cleansing cities to preserve the regime’s land corridor to the Mediterranean.
This subversion reached deep into North Africa, leading Morocco to sever diplomatic ties with Tehran after intelligence revealed that Iran, via Hezbollah, was supplying surface-to-air missiles and urban warfare training to the separatist Polisario Front in Western Sahara.
Israel’s decisive blows
For decades, the West engaged in futile appeasement, but the strategic landscape shifted permanently due to the military resolve of the State of Israel. Beginning in 2024, Israel launched a historic campaign that systematically dismantled what the IRGC spent 40 years building.
Through unprecedented intelligence operations, Israel decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership. From the legendary exploding pager operation that neutralized thousands of operatives, to precise airstrikes eliminating longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah, Israel exposed the “hitman” as deeply vulnerable.
By degrading missile stockpiles and destroying command bunkers, Israel did what the rest of the world lacked the courage to attempt.
In 2026, Israel masterfully exploited the fog of war surrounding the Islamic Republic’s conflicts and launched a massive aerial and ground offensive into southern Lebanon, obliterating Hezbollah’s strategic infrastructure in key strongholds like Bint Jbail, El-Khiam, and the Beaufort fortress.
This dismantling explains why Tehran was driven to madness upon witnessing the destruction of its primary global hitman, culminating in its desperate retaliatory missile barrage on June 7, 2026. The sobering reality remains that every missile fired by Hezbollah and Hamas into Israel was pulled directly by the hand of the Islamic Republic.
A global debt of gratitude to Israel
As long as the parallel structures of the IRGC dictate Iran’s wealth, institutional moderation is an impossibility. The Islamic Republic will continue to sacrifice Iran’s national wealth and the future of its youth to sustain its revolutionary fronts.
In this dark landscape, the international community owes a profound, eternal debt of gratitude to the State of Israel for standing as the irreplaceable shield of civilization.
By crushing the IRGC-Hezbollah terror apparatus, Israel has not only defended its own borders but has liberated the region from a lawless mafia cartel, protecting the sovereignty and security of the entire civilized world.
The writer is an Iranian journalist and former editor-in-chief of ManotoTV.