The West is ignoring the dangerous new partnership reshaping Iran from within
The West is ignoring the dangerous new partnership reshaping Iran from within
Kasra AarabiFri, May 29, 2026 at 11:50 AM UTC
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Mohammad Ali Jafari is perhaps the second most powerful individual in Tehran - Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters
A shadowy new partnership appears to have formed between two of the most powerful figures in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Yet in the West it has been almost entirely overlooked.
It is no secret that the mainstream coverage of the Iran war has lacked nuance. But nowhere has this been clearer than in efforts to understand the regime’s internal power structure following the elimination of supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
Following Khamenei’s death and the mysterious absence of his son and successor, Mojtaba, the mainstream narrative was quick to cast the speaker of the Iranian parliament and IRGC veteran Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf as the “Putin” of Iran. And while it is true that the IRGC very much remains in control of the regime (a process that began long before the war), it soon became clear that Ghalibaf was not the real power in Tehran.
Not only has Ghalibaf been undermined during negotiations with the United States, but rumours circulating among networks of younger IRGC figures suggest the former Guardsman is now sulking after being left out in the cold.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was quickly dubbed the ‘Putin’ of Iran following supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s death - AFP
In March, we revealed that Ahmad Vahidi, the IRGC’s new commander-in-chief, was in fact the main power in the regime – a report that has subsequently been corroborated by Western intelligence sources. But this is only half of the story.
Although Vahidi is certainly a key – if not the key – figure in the regime, he has been absent from the IRGC’s command in recent years due to fulfilling key roles in the state bureaucracy, including serving as interior minister under the late Ebrahim Raisi in 2021 and heading the Supreme National Defense University from 2018. So from the moment Vahidi became commander-in-chief, he will have needed to expand his constituency within the IRGC, especially among the younger generations of the Guard and its Basij militia.
This is where Mohammad Ali Jafari (aka Aziz Jafari) a former IRGC commander-in-chief – and perhaps the second most powerful individual in Iran right now – comes in. Jafari is the man with the solutions to Vahidi’s problem. And our understanding is that a murky alliance has formed between Vahidi and Jafari, both of whom are strong rivals to Ghalibaf.
Jafari’s personal clash with Ghalibaf became public knowledge in 2022. A leaked recording of a conversation in 2018, reportedly between Jafari, then the Guards’ commander-in-chief, and the IRGC’s economic deputy, implicated Ghalibaf in extensive corruption. It was Jafari, however, who would go on to lose his job.
But Jafari would not be cast aside. In fact, in 2019, he would go on to lead one of the most important, secretive organisations formed to engineer political and social outcomes in Iran: the shadowy Baqiatallah Headquarters.
The importance of this apparatus was stressed in a leaked recording we acquired from the Baqiatallah Headquarters, where its deputy, senior IRGC official Sasan Zare, revealed the headquarters had the same special status as the notorious Quds Force in that it reported directly to the Office of the Supreme Leader.
The Baqiatallah Headquarters is a prominent department within the IRGC, commanded by former chief Mohammad Ali Jafari - Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto
Jafari is one of the IRGC’s most skilled strategists. As commander-in-chief from 2007-2019, he designed and oversaw the decentralisation of the Guard, a wartime strategy the IRGC is now using against the United States and Israel. After 2007, he pushed the creation of IRGC provincial guards to prepare the regime for two major threats: external war and domestic unrest.
Under his leadership, the IRGC greatly expanded its military and security capabilities. Jafari helped create the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, founded the Guard’s cyber command and strengthened its asymmetric warfare capacity against the United States. He also played a central role in the brutal suppression of anti-regime protests in 2009 and 2017-2018, both of which seriously challenged the survival of the Islamic Republic.
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In 2019, Jafari created the Baqiatallah Headquarters as a social and cultural arm of the IRGC. As our research has shown, its purpose was to organise, train and mobilise the regime’s small but radical support base across Iran. This strategy centred on what the IRGC calls the “Middle Ring”, a network of radical Islamist youths. Jafari’s plan aimed to build 800,000 small groups, with nearly four million members, across Iran’s neighbourhoods within five years. These groups were trained to carry out cultural and political operations, from ideological policing and propaganda to shaping political results.
Since 2019, the “Middle Ring” has also been used in election engineering. In March 2024, a leaked audio file showed former foreign minister Javad Zarif pointing to Jafari’s role in manipulating elections. In 2024, Jafari reportedly used this network to support Saeed Jalili and block Ghalibaf from reaching the second round, deepening their rivalry.
Jafari (left) reportedly harnessed a covert IRGC and hardline network to bolster Saeed Jalili (right) - Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images
Indeed, it is through this “Middle Ring” apparatus that Jafari has been able to consolidate and command a strong base among the younger, more ideologically compliant third and fourth generations of the IRGC and Basij – the exact constituency Vahidi now needs.
Like Jafari, Vahidi – a hardline ideological “purist” – is likely to have unfavourable views towards Ghalibaf due to the corruption allegations, which have tarnished the reputation of the IRGC itself as an ideological Islamist force.
Ghalibaf’s political weakness also stems from the gap between his revolutionary image and his family’s lifestyle abroad. Reports have highlighted his son Eshagh’s long ties to Australia, where he studied, worked, held temporary residency and received rental income from property. His wife, daughter and son-in-law were also at the centre of the 2022 “LayetteGate” scandal after returning from Turkey apparently with a large amount of baby goods, at a time when ordinary Iranians were suffering under deep economic pressure.
These scandals have fed the image of a man who preaches revolutionary austerity at home while his family benefits from life abroad. Politically, Ghalibaf has also been highly flexible since entering electoral politics in 2005. He has moved between the image of a tough security commander, a technocratic mayor, a pragmatic moderniser and a faithful hardliner close to the centre of power.
Ghalibaf (right) has found himself in a weak political position - Hamed Malekpour/Iranian Parliament Communication Office/Handout via Getty Images
This constant rebranding has helped him survive, but it has also led many factions within the regime to distrust him. Ghalibaf embodies the corrupt oligarchy of the IRGC that has come under intense criticism from the younger, more ideologically compliant generations of the Guard.
Thus, a coalition of interests, ideology and power appears to have brought Vahidi and Jafari – heads of two of the most powerful oligarchic IRGC clans – together. Vahidi needs Jafari to mobilise the “Middle Ring” and younger IRGC and Basij generations to build a personal constituency, while Jafari is using Vahidi to sideline rivals such as Ghalibaf.
This alliance between Jafari and Vahidi could also start to reshape the body, personnel and tactics of the IRGC. Both men represent a puritanical, ideological perspective within the IRGC, one that sees politics, society and the region through a hard theocratic-security lens. If their alliance succeeds, it will empower the younger, more radical segments of the Guard and Basij, who are more ideologically disciplined and less tied to the old bureaucratic politics of the Islamic Republic.
This would deepen the regime’s transformation from a theocracy protected by the IRGC into a security-theocracy dominated by it. The consequences will be serious. At home, the Islamic Republic is likely to become even more repressive. Abroad, a Guard that fully assumes political authority will be more aggressive: it will see confrontation with Iran’s enemies not as a risk, but as the natural language of power.
If the regime and the Vahidi-Jafari alliance survive the war, these repercussions will be very clear – especially once Bibi and Trump are out of office.
Kasra Aarabi is director of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) research at United Against Nuclear Iran
Saeid Golkar is senior adviser at United Against Nuclear Iranand UC Foundation Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Source: “AOL Breaking”
