IRGC is shaping Iran strategy: Report

Tehran (TIP): NEW DELHI: Battle-hardened com­mand­ers in the Islamic Revolu­tion­ary Guards Corps (IRGC) have become the key decision­makers on mat­ters of secur­ity, war, and dip­lomacy since the US-Israeli air­strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatol­lah Ali Khame­nei on February 28, according to a New York Times (NYT) report.
Pres­id­ent Masoud Pezeshkian and his cab­inet have been side­lined and told to focus only on domestic affairs while for­eign min­is­ter Abbas Aragh­chi has been mar­gin­al­ised in nego­ti­ations with the United States.
The role of Mojtaba Khame­nei, the son of late Ali Khame­nei, in run­ning the affairs of Iran is lim­ited as he has not been seen in pub­lic since he was appoin­ted Supreme Leader in March.
Access to Mojtaba is lim­ited as he is sur­roun­ded mostly by doc­tors and med­ical staff who are treat­ing the injur­ies he sus­tained in the air­strikes on Feb­ru­ary 28. “Mojtaba is man­aging the coun­try as though he is the dir­ector of the board,” said Abdolreza Dav­ari, a politi­cian who was a senior adviser to Mah­moud Ahmad­ine­jad when he was pres­id­ent and knows Mojtaba. “He [Mojtaba] relies heav­ily on the advice and guid­ance of the board mem­bers, and they col­lect­ively make all the decisions,” Dav­ari said in a phone inter­view to NYT from Tehran. “The gen­er­als are the board mem­bers.”
According to offi­cials, Mojtaba, who is badly injured, has not recor­ded a video or audio mes­sage because “he does not want to appear vul­ner­able or sound weak in his first pub­lic address”. He has issued writ­ten state­ments that have been pos­ted online and read on state television.
The com­bin­a­tion of con­cern for his safety, his injur­ies and the sheer chal­lenge of reach­ing him has res­ul­ted in Mojtaba defer­ring to the gen­er­als. “Mojtaba is not yet in full com­mand or con­trol,” said Sanam Vakil, the dir­ector of the Middle East and North Africa for Chatham House. “There is, perhaps, defer­ence to him. He signs off or he is part of the decision-mak­ing structure in a formal way. But he is presented with fait accom­pli present­a­tions right now.”
Accord­ing to the NYT report, the speaker of Iranian par­lia­ment Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Guards gen­eral is now the lead negotiator with the US.
The board has key mem­bers com­pris­ing IRGC chief Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, Gen. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the newly appoin­ted head of the Supreme National Secur­ity Coun­cil (NSC) and a former com­mander of the Guards, and Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a com­mander, who has served as the top military adviser to both father and son supreme lead­ers.
“Mojtaba is not supreme; he might be a leader in name, but he is not supreme the way his father was,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran dir­ector of the Inter­na­tional Crisis Group. “Mojtaba is sub­ser­vi­ent to the Revolu­tion­ary Guards because he owes his pos­i­tion and he owes the sur­vival of the sys­tem to them.”
Officials have said that the gen­er­als view the war with the US and Israel as a threat to the regime’s sur­vival.
The report said that it was the Guards who came up with the strategy to attack Israel and the Gulf states, along with the clos­ing of Hor­muz strait to mari­time traffic. They were the ones who agreed to a tem­por­ary cease­fire with the US and approved backchan­nel dip­lomacy and dir­ect nego­ti­ations with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. They tapped Ghalibaf from among their own ranks to lead the talks with Vice Pres­id­ent JD Vance in Islamabad.