Iran Today

Two Armies: The IRGC-Artesh Fracture Tearing Iran Apart

by Iran Prism 10 min read

The Admiral

In May 2020, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari — former commander of the Artesh Navy and one of the most decorated officers in Iran’s regular military — gave a candid interview that was never meant to survive the day.

“Why boast of this or that achievement day in and day out?” he asked, his frustration undisguised. He was talking about the IRGC — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — and its relentless self-promotion on state media. While the IRGC commanded billions in budgets, construction contracts, and media attention, the Artesh — Iran’s conventional military, the army, navy, and air force — received a fraction of the resources and none of the glory.1

State news removed the video within hours. IRGC-affiliated Telegram channels accused Sayyari of treason. The interview vanished from official records. But the grievance it expressed — the institutional humiliation of a professional military by a parallel force that answers only to the Supreme Leader — did not vanish. It metastasized.

Imagine serving your country for decades while a parallel organization — one that answers to no one you elected — takes the budget, the promotions, and the credit. Now imagine being handed ten rounds of ammunition and told to defend a regime that treats you as a potential threat rather than a partner.

Six years later, that grievance has become the central fracture in the Islamic Republic’s collapsing security architecture. The IRGC and the Artesh are fighting the same war with different resources, different loyalties, and increasingly different calculations about whether the regime they serve deserves to survive.

The Design

Iran has two armies because the men who made the revolution did not trust the army that existed.

Three months after the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini created the IRGC on May 5 — a parallel military force loyal not to the state but to the Islamic Revolution itself. The decision was driven by a specific fear: the Artesh, built by the Shah with American training and equipment, might stage a counter-revolution. On July 9, 1980, that fear was validated when the Nojeh Coup — a plot by pro-Shah officers at Nojeh Air Base — was uncovered. Over 150 officers were executed.2

The dual-military system was the regime’s solution to the coup problem. The IRGC watches the Artesh. The Artesh cannot act without the IRGC knowing. Neither force is strong enough alone to seize power. The design was deliberate: institutional distrust as structural insurance.

For forty-five years, it worked. No coup was attempted after Nojeh. The two forces fought side by side in the Iran-Iraq War, albeit with chronic coordination failures. The system’s cost — redundancy, rivalry, waste — was treated as an acceptable price for regime security.

In March 2026, the design that prevented coups is producing something potentially worse: a military that cannot function as a unified force at the moment it needs to most.

The Disparity

The numbers tell the story of two institutions living in different countries.

The IRGC’s budget in 2020: $6.96 billion. The Artesh: $2.73 billion — a 2.5-to-1 ratio. By 2025, the gap had widened further: IRGC at 311 trillion tomans versus Artesh at 177 trillion. The Artesh provides approximately two-thirds of Iran’s total military manpower but receives barely a third of the defense budget.3

Two Forces, Two Realities

ArteshIRGC
Personnel350,000-420,000~190,000 + ~90,000 active Basij (up to 450,000 registered)
Budget share~35%~65%
Enterprises controlledNone25-40% of GDP (parasitic ownership)
Parliament members (since 1979)0Multiple
Defense ministers from ranks (since 1989)0All
Controls: telecom, ports, constructionNoYes
Rank-and-file pay$150-300/month$150-300/month
Senior commanders’ wealthModestBillions (bonyads, smuggling)

The economic empire is the deeper asymmetry. The IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya construction conglomerate operates through eight hundred front companies and five thousand subcontractors, holding $22 billion in oil and petrochemical contracts — four times the IRGC’s official budget. The IRGC-affiliated Mobin Trust Consortium acquired fifty-one percent of Telecom Company of Iran for $7.8 billion — the largest transaction in Tehran Stock Exchange history. The IRGC controls approximately ninety ports — nearly forty-five percent of Iran’s total — handling an estimated $12 billion annually. Smuggling through IRGC-controlled border crossings adds another $20-25 billion per year.4

Former President Ahmadinejad called them “our smuggler brothers.” The Artesh has no such brothers. It has conscripts, aging equipment, and a budget that barely covers operational costs.

Political exclusion completes the picture. Zero Artesh veterans have been elected to parliament since 1979. Not a single defense minister has come from Artesh ranks since 1989. The professional military has been systematically excluded from political power while being asked to fight and die for a regime that treats it as a potential threat rather than a partner.5

The Fracture in War

The disparity that festered in peacetime has become operationally catastrophic in war.

On March 12, 2026, Iran International reported the details. IRGC units refused to transport wounded Artesh soldiers for medical treatment. Artesh frontline units were operating with ten rounds per soldier — some units with twenty bullets for every two soldiers. Field units had no reliable access to drinking water. “Group desertions” were reported — soldiers abandoned by their own IRGC counterparts, seeking refuge in nearby towns.6

The IRGC, meanwhile, had dispersed its commanders into hospitals, schools, and stadiums — using civilian infrastructure as shields. Iran International reported before the war that IRGC commanders were holding meetings inside Khatam al-Anbia Hospital. A hospital employee said: “The presence of these individuals, along with their protection units, has alarmed staff.” Emily Blout, formerly of the Pentagon, assessed the tactic as “a page out of the Hamas playbook.”7

Foreign Minister Araghchi confirmed the operational reality on Al Jazeera on March 1: “Our military units are now independent and somehow isolated, and they are acting based on instructions — general instructions — given to them in advance.” The chain of command was not merely damaged. It had formally devolved into autonomous units operating on pre-war instructions, with no mechanism for coordination or updated orders.8

Reserve mobilization failed. The IRGC attempted to call up reserves in the second week. Many summoned personnel simply did not report. Those who did, according to Iran International, used their mobilization orders as cover to move their families toward the borders — treating the call-up as exit papers rather than deployment orders.9

The Kingmaker

The Artesh controls every asset the IRGC lacks.

All fixed-wing military aircraft. All major warships and submarines. All strategic air defense systems. All heavy armor. Without the Artesh, the IRGC has no air cover, no close air support, no strategic airlift, and no naval capability beyond small boats and mines.10

Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service — the nonpartisan analytical arm of the US Congress — assessed the Artesh as “avowedly apolitical.” Artesh leaders, he wrote, “repeatedly assert that they are loyal to whatever regime is in power at the time.” And his most consequential assessment: the Artesh “will not, under any conceivable circumstance, deploy its ground armor to wrest back control of territory for the regime.”11

This is not an opposition source. It is the CRS — the institution that briefs members of Congress.

The Artesh has a constitutional basis for non-cooperation. Mojtaba Khamenei’s selection as Supreme Leader violated the Islamic Republic’s own succession procedures — the Assembly of Experts was bombed during voting, eight members boycotted, and the IRGC applied documented pressure. The Artesh, which swears loyalty to the constitutional order, is “not constitutionally obligated to a leader whose selection violated the constitution.”12

And the Artesh does not exist in a political vacuum. GAMAAN’s September 2025 survey found that forty-nine percent of Iranians support Reza Pahlavi declaring leadership of the transition period — with sixteen percent undecided. GAMAAN’s director assessed that the undecided were already breaking toward Pahlavi during the protests, putting realistic support at sixty-five percent or higher — and that was before the January massacre, the war, and Khamenei’s death. In GAMAAN’s demographic breakdowns, Pahlavi’s support runs highest among Iranians without higher education — the working class, the “barefoot” Iranians the regime claims as its base. The same demographic that fills the Artesh’s conscript ranks. Many of the soldiers holding ten rounds of ammunition and watching the IRGC hoard resources are part of that majority. They are not choosing between loyalty and a void — they are choosing between a collapsing regime and a named alternative with a published transition plan and half the country behind him.13

The historical precedent is exact. In February 1979, General Gharebaghi — the last chairman of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces’ Joint Chiefs — declared the military’s neutrality. The Pahlavi dynasty ended not because the army was defeated but because it chose not to fight. The Artesh holds the same power today. If it refuses to act against the population — or actively cooperates with a transitional authority — the IRGC cannot sustain control alone.

The Honest Part

The fracture is real, but its resolution is not predetermined — and the transition carries genuine risks.

These scenarios need to be read against what the IRGC actually has left. Its bank is destroyed. Its payroll system is gone. Its Supreme Leader is dead and his successor’s legitimacy is contested. Forty-eight senior commanders have been killed. Its air defenses are degraded by eighty percent. Its soldiers are deserting, its reserves refuse to report, and its Basij are faking their own deaths. The IRGC is not negotiating from strength. It is fragmenting under sustained military, financial, and intelligence pressure. But fragmenting institutions can still be dangerous — sometimes more dangerous than intact ones.

The warlord scenario. The IRGC’s Mosaic Defense doctrine — thirty-two autonomous provincial commands, each with independent operations, intelligence, and counterintelligence — was designed for decentralized survival when the center collapses. In theory, these commands become thirty-two fiefdoms, each controlling local resources, each negotiating separately. Libya’s 122 armed groups by 2018 began as a unified revolutionary force. But the IRGC’s provincial commands are running out of money, ammunition, and leadership faster than they can adapt. Warlordism requires resources to sustain — and the resources are being systematically destroyed.14

The de-Baathification trap. The NUFDI Emergency Phase Booklet explicitly warns against repeating Iraq’s mistake — dissolving the security forces and banning the institutional class. The IRGC sits on top of enterprises accounting for twenty-five to forty percent of GDP — construction, telecom, ports, agribusiness — but it is a parasitic ownership layer, not the economy itself. The dams, cell towers, and shipping terminals would function without IRGC generals skimming no-bid contracts. Removing the parasite would not destroy a quarter of the GDP; it would likely improve its efficiency. The real challenge is managing the transition without the chaos that followed Iraq’s de-Baathification — and the opposition has studied that failure specifically to avoid repeating it.15

The barracks state. Joby Warrick told Responsible Statecraft that the most likely outcome is “military dictatorship by the IRGC” — installing a figurehead religious leader while maintaining economic and political control. Egypt under Sisi. But a barracks state requires a functioning barracks. The IRGC cannot pay its soldiers, cannot defend its airspace, cannot trust its own intelligence services, and has lost its Supreme Leader. The Modern War Institute at West Point posed the question directly: “Would the army be able to support a regime-ending revolution, or would this lead the country into a civil war between the Artesh and the IRGC?” The answer depends on whether the IRGC retains enough cohesion to fight — and every indicator suggests it does not.16

These risks are real. They are also the risks of inaction — a collapsing regime with no transition plan is more dangerous than a collapsing regime with one. The NUFDI Emergency Phase Booklet — 180 days of operational blueprints, explicitly designed to avoid de-Baathification — exists precisely because the opposition understands that the fall is the easy part. What comes after is the work. And ninety-three million people will live with consequences either way. The question is whether the world helps shape them or watches them unfold.

This article is part of Five Fractures. For the financial collapse accelerating desertion, see The Day the Pay Stopped. For Iran’s remaining strategic leverage, see Four Hundred Ships.

Footnotes

  1. Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, May 2020 interview; video removal and IRGC response documented by Iran International ↩

  2. Nojeh Coup: multiple historical sources; IRGC creation date and rationale via IRGC organizational history ↩

  3. Budget data: IRGC vs. Artesh appropriations via Iranian parliamentary documents and SIPRI estimates ↩

  4. Khatam al-Anbiya: IRGC economic analysis; Mobin Trust/Telecom acquisition: Tehran Stock Exchange records; port control: Clingendael Institute ↩

  5. Ahmadinejad “smuggler brothers” quote via Iranian media; Artesh political exclusion: Kenneth Katzman (CRS) ↩

  6. Iran International, supply shortage and desertion reporting, March 12, 2026 ↩

  7. Iran International pre-war reporting on IRGC in hospitals, February 21, 2026; Emily Blout assessment ↩

  8. Foreign Minister Araghchi, Al Jazeera interview, March 1, 2026 ↩

  9. Iran International on reserve mobilization failure; mobilization orders as exit papers ↩

  10. Artesh force structure and capabilities: IISS Military Balance; CRS Iran military reports ↩

  11. Kenneth Katzman, Congressional Research Service, Iran military assessments (multiple reports) ↩

  12. Constitutional succession analysis: Stimson Center; Assembly of Experts disruption: Iran International ↩

  13. GAMAAN, “What is your opinion about Reza Pahlavi declaring leadership of the transition period?” September 2025 survey, Tilburg University; GAMAAN director Ammar Maleki on undecided voters ↩

  14. IRGC Mosaic Defense: Reza Talaeinik (Deputy Defense Minister); Libya armed groups: UN Panel of Experts, 2018 ↩

  15. NUFDI Emergency Phase Booklet, July 2025; IRGC GDP share: Clingendael Institute ↩

  16. Joby Warrick to Responsible Statecraft; Modern War Institute at West Point analysis ↩