ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine the Sepah’s importance in the foreign policy of post-revolutionary Iran, in particular, since Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005. Equally important to the Sepah’s political rise has been its crucial position in the security dimensions of the IRI’s foreign policy, which include the military/defence and regional spheres of post-Khomeini Iran. The Corps’ involvement in these spheres, military/defence and regional endeavours is built on its political and ideological profile as the ‘vanguard’ of revolutionary Islam beyond Iranian borders – as well as its duty as the protector of the regime and its achievements. From the outset of the revolution in Iran, the Sepah was charged with exporting the Iranian revolution on behalf of its civilian political-clerical establishment. Indeed, it was this duty to export the Iranian revolution which provided an ideological underpinning for a plethora of the Sepah’s overseas operations, namely the provision of military training, funds and at times overt operations in support of military revolutionaries. These revolutionaries included, in particular, Shi’a militants in Lebanon and Iraq, as well as operations against US interests in the region and ‘covert action against regime opponents’ abroad (Katzman 1993: 96). With the republic’s turn towards rapprochement, the Sepah’s leeway in the export of the revolution was reduced if not completely seized. Not until the removal of Iran’s enemies in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq could the Sepah’s endeavours in this regard thrive. Indeed, the presence of this volatile environment seemed to have provided the Sepah with both challenges and opportunities to sustain Iran’s regional influence via its overseas activities in the Middle East.
