For many observers of Iranian politics, the most important question after the 2026 war and ceasefire is whether the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would support the Memorandum of Understanding and whether the Memorandum could lead to a fundamental change in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ identity and strategy. The Guard’s own messaging suggests the answer is no.
The aftermath of the 2026 war seems to have strengthened the Revolutionary Guard’s political weight within the Islamic Republic’s decision-making structure, especially after the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who had been the ultimate decision-maker. At the same time, his son and official successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, has remained absent from public view since the war started, making the official interpreters of the Supreme Leader’s thinking inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps important for understanding the regime’s public line.
The Guard’s representative office to the Supreme Leader is important because its cohesion depends on not only military organization but also an ideological and political system.
Among all, Hojatoleslam Abdollah Haji Sadeghi, the Supreme Leader’s representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is one of the most important voices. His office functions as the Guard’s ideological and political command center, supervising political and ideological education, shaping the organization’s propaganda and political messaging, overseeing its system of political commissars and propagandists, and ensuring that commanders and rank-and-file personnel remain committed to the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, the idea of guardianship of the jurists, on which the Islamic Republic is based. The Guard’s representative office to the Supreme Leader is important because its cohesion depends on not only military organization but also an ideological and political system. The office shapes how Guardsmen understand and interpret both domestic and international politics.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps media organizations, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basirat website and its weekly magazine, Sobh-e Sadegh, serve as the organization’s primary propaganda and political platforms, through which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps explains the Guard’s official positions, justifies controversial decisions, and communicates the ideological boundaries within which commanders, Basij members, and the broader revolutionary constituency can operate.
In this context, when Sadeghi delivers public statements immediately after one of the most significant foreign policy developments in recent years, those remarks are not simply religious sermons but carefully crafted institutional messaging. Sadeghi’s two recent statements—one addressed directly to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and Basij members, and the other delivered during a press conference—provide the clearest explanation of the Guard’s understanding of the new Memorandum of Understanding.
Sadeghi spends more time reaffirming the Guard’s traditional worldview than discussing the Memorandum itself.
Along with many other speeches and messages by Sadghei and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ political deputy general, Yadollah Javani, they reveal that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps does not see the agreement as strategic reorientation. It portrays the Memorandum as a tactical adjustment authorized by Mojtaba under exceptional circumstances. The emphasis is that the Guard’s ideology and strategic orientation remain unchanged.
The legitimacy of the agreement derives from the Supreme Leader’s permission, according to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ official interpretation, as Sadeghi insists that whatever the Leader authorizes becomes binding on all revolutionary forces. Even more revealing is his repeated effort to suppress internal criticism. While parts of Iran’s hardline camp have accused government officials and members of the Supreme National Security Council of weakness or betrayal in recent weeks, Sadeghi rejects such accusations, but he also rejects the opposite interpretation that the Memorandum completely fulfilled the Leader’s objectives.
Unity does not equal moderation. Sadeghi spends more time reaffirming the Guard’s traditional worldview than discussing the Memorandum itself. He reminds his audience that the establishment of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rested on two permanent principles: absolute loyalty to the Supreme Leader and permanent struggle against global arrogance. The Guard continues to describe the United States as the principal embodiment of that arrogance. Sadeghi emphasizes repeatedly that the Guardsmen “never shake hands with the enemy,” in reference to President Donald Trump shaking hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and that negotiation does not mean reconciliation.
This continuity is not surprising to people who are familiar with the Guard’s ideological literature. From its inception, the Guardsmen have understood their confrontation with the United States not as a dispute over particular policies, but as an enduring ideological conflict between the “front of truth” and the “front of arrogance.” In the Revolutionary Guard’s worldview, resistance is a strategic doctrine, not a tactic. This aligns with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ ideological and political training, which portrays the United States as the leader of a global system of domination while casting Iran as the leader of the axis of resistance. Within this worldview, tactical flexibility does not imply strategic reconciliation or rearrangement.
Even while defending the Memorandum, the Guard continues to frame the external environment as one of continuing confrontation.
This also helps to explain why the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps emphasizes military readiness despite discussing a diplomatic agreement. Its emblem includes a Quranic verse: “And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows.” In this case, rather than presenting the Memorandum of Understanding as the beginning of de-escalation, he instructs commanders to strengthen both their hard and soft capabilities. Quoting the Qur’anic injunction to “prepare against them whatever force you can,” he argues that the present moment is a time for increasing power, not reducing it. Even while defending the Memorandum, the Guard continues to frame the external environment as one of continuing confrontation, justifying its efforts to expand the Guard’s power and influence.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these statements is their repeated insistence that the Memorandum will not change the revolutionary and Islamist identity of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps itself. Sadeghi rejects attempts to distinguish today’s commanders from those who died during the Iran-Iraq War, arguing that the current generation of commanders remains just as ideological as their predecessors. He concludes by declaring that anyone hoping the Guard will one day separate itself from clerical rule “will take that wish to the grave.” This rhetoric is intended to reassure both the organization’s rank-and-file, and its broader revolutionary constituency is not ideological retreat.
While analysts often interpret Iranian diplomatic initiatives as evidence of moderation, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ own materials suggest a different reading. For the Guard, the agreement is justified as an instrument for managing immediate external pressures and protecting the Islamic Republic during a dangerous period, not as the beginning of a post-revolutionary or post-Khamenei foreign policy.
While analysts often interpret Iranian diplomatic initiatives as evidence of moderation, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ own materials suggest a different reading.
Recent tanker attacks make it clear that they are not using the pause to reduce pressure; instead, they try to shape the pause. If this reading is correct, then expectations that the Memorandum will lead to the gradual normalization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are mistaken. Resistance, anti-Americanism, anti-Israeli policy, and absolute loyalty to the Supreme Leader remain the permanent foundations of Iran’s revolutionary and Islamist identity.
The memorandum is, therefore, better understood as tactical adaptation akin to Khamenei’s earlier concept of heroic flexibility. As Sadeghi explains, negotiation is not the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ preferred choice, but resistance remains its principal strategy.
This has important policy implications for the United States and its allies. They should not assume that if Iran follows parts of the Memorandum of Understanding, it will lead to broader moderation. Iran needs the Memorandum to get through the current crisis, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still depends on maritime insecurity, proxy groups, and ideological mobilization to protect its long-term interests. Policymakers should be able to distinguish between temporary restraint and genuine strategic change. Real change would require the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to rethink its mission, its relationship with the Supreme Leader, its approach to the United States and Israel, and its use of asymmetric tactics to maintain the regime.
