Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps

The corps has become a vast military-based conglomerate, with control of Iran's missile batteries, oversight of its nuclear program and a multibillion-dollar business empire reaching into nearly every sector of the economy. It runs laser eye-surgery clinics, manufactures cars, builds roads and bridges, develops gas and oil fields and controls black-market smuggling. Members of the Revolutionary Guards and their families receive privileged status at every level, which benefits them in university admissions and in the distribution of subsidized commodities, experts say.

Its fortune and its sense of entitlement have reportedly grown under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former member. Since 2005, when he took office, companies affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards have been awarded more than 750 government contracts in construction and oil and gas projects, Iranian press reports document. And all of its finances stay off the budget, free from any state oversight or need to provide an accounting to Parliament. The corps's alumni hold dozens of seats in Parliament and top government posts.

In 2007 the administration of George W. Bush accused the Revolutionary Guard, and the Quds Force in particular, of supplying weapons and training to anti-American fighters in Iraq. In a press conference, President Bush stated flatly that the Quds force was the source of so-called shaped charges used by Iraqi insurgents to attack American troops, far more sophisticated than standard improvised explosive devices. The administration announced sanctions against the Quds force, calling it a terrorist group, and accused the entire Revolutionary Guard Corps of proliferating weapons of mass destruction. It was the first time that the United States has taken such steps against the armed forces of any sovereign government.

In the aftermath of Iran's 2009 election crisis, the corps remains a public front of unity.  The crisis, the gravest since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, erupted after Iran's Interior Ministry declared that the moderate Mir Hussein Moussavi was defeated by Mr. Ahmadinejad by 63 percent to 34 percent. Tens of thousands of demonstrators representing a cross section of society and part of the clerical establishment called the official results a fraud, demanding a full recount if not a new election.

A few days before the vote, Gen. Yadollah Javani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard political office, had said if Mr. Moussavi had a velvet revolution in mind, he would see it "quashed before it is born."

With the nation's ruling class apparently divided by the electoral results, the hard-liners in charge sought to portray the unrest as the work of outsiders. The Guard said it had taken action against "deviant news sites" financed by American and Canadian companies. Its aggressive drive to silence dissenting views led many political analysts to describe the events surrounding the June 12 presidential election as a military coup.

On June 22, the Guards issued an ominous warning on their Web site saying that protesters would face "revolutionary confrontation." "The Guards will firmly confront in a revolutionary manner rioters and all those who violate the law," the notice said. Shortly afterward, a group of as many as a thousand demonstrators at Haft-e-tir Square in central Tehran was quickly overwhelmed by baton-wielding riot police and tear gas. During the ongoing crackdown some protestors, notably 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, were shot and killed.

Nonetheless, there are glimmers of fractures under the corps's opaque and disciplined surface. Political analysts said that behind the scenes there were internal disagreements about the handling of the election and the demonstrations. One political analyst said that many of the rank and file were known to have voted for Mohammad Khatami, an outspoken reformer, when he was first elected president in 1997.

In his will, Ayatollah Khomeini asked that the military stay out of politics, and senior Revolutionary Guards officials have been careful to defend themselves against accusations of political meddling after the June 12 election. But Gen. Javani warned the public that there was no room for dissent.

"Today, no one is impartial," he said, according to the official news agency IRNA. "There are two currents: those who defend and support the revolution and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it."

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