“We’ve knocked out one regime. Then we knocked out a second regime. … Now we have a group of people that are very different, they are much more reasonable, I think, much less radicalized. We have had regime change.”1 This was how U.S. president Donald Trump described the outcome of recent events in Tehran.
In one narrow sense, this claim captures something real. The balance of power within the Islamic Republic of Iran has changed significantly. The regime that existed before the war—with its uneasy mix of Shia Muslim clerical authority, elected institutions, bargaining factions, and armed agencies of coercion—is no longer functioning as it did. A different configuration of power is emerging.
This has not, however, been the kind of regime change that many Iranians have been hoping for. It is not a transition toward democracy, moderation, or a more responsible and accountable government. Instead, it is the culmination of a long internal transformation: The core of the regime’s coercive apparatus, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has become the primary institution through which the Islamic Republic survives, governs, represses, and wages war.
Over the years following its founding in 1979, the IRGC went from being a militia to being a full-fledged military force, then an ideological-security cartel, and then a parallel “state within the state.” Now, under the pressure of war and a succession crisis, the IRGC has become something close to the state itself. Each phase of the Guards’ institutional expansion and encroachment into the state came about due to an internal or external crisis facing the Islamic Republic; every crisis gave [End Page 23] the IRGC a new mission, each mission brought new resources, and each resource the IRGC gained control over gave it more autonomy. Over time, the IRGC moved from protecting the Islamic Republic to shaping it, then from shaping it to commanding its most important functions. The current moment only makes visible what has been developing for decades.
Published originally on July 3, 2026.
Read the full essay in the Journal of Democracy 37, no. 3 (2026): 23-35.
