Iran's Reserve of Last Resort

The regime leadership’s apparent reluctance to use the IRGC Ground Forces in the most severe internal crackdown since the revolution and even in the largest military operation Iran has conducted beyond its borders since the Iran-Iraq War suggests that it sees the IRGC Ground Forces as a reserve of last resort. We therefore must consider the scale and capacity of these forces and at what point the regime might have to choose between supporting foreign activities and ensuring its domestic security if protests worsen as external security requirements rise. The Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute has therefore developed an order of battle of the IRGC Ground Forces to help make that assessment. The basic order of battle presented in this report gives insight into the capabilities the Iranian leadership apparently values most in the IRGC Ground Forces—specifically the ability to organize, plan, and oversee the conduct of military, paramilitary, and internal security operations beyond the scale of what the Quds Force can handle outside Iran and what Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) and Basij can manage inside the country.