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Men in military uniforms attend the funeral procession for seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members killed in a strike, in Tehran on April 5, 2024. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images
Enormous losses can be retrospectively absorbed into a narrative of revolutionary endurance and eventual strategic advantage.
Mohsen Rezaei has spent much of his public life inside that logic. He commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) through most of the Iran–Iraq War, including the costly 1986 Operation Karbala-4. On Aug. 10, Iran put Rezaei back near the center of national security decision-making, appointing him secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. Reuters reports that he has opposed extending ceasefires and voiced deep skepticism about negotiations with Washington.
That appointment captures the deeper danger in Iran’s current war. The institution gaining power in Tehran was created to defend something more specific than Iranian territory: the Islamic Revolution. That distinction is written into Iran’s constitution. As the IRGC assumes greater control over wartime strategy, it becomes increasingly important. Moscow can help the Guards sustain resistance, consume American resources, and preserve the revolutionary system while Iran absorbs most of the physical and economic damage.
2 Definitions of Survival
Iran’s own constitutional language is unusually revealing. Article 143 assigns the regular Army responsibility for safeguarding the country’s independence and territorial integrity. Article 150 says the IRGC exists to continue “guarding the Revolution and its achievements.”
The Revolution cannot survive easily if Iran ceases to function as a state. Yet the priorities are not identical.
A national military has to consider infrastructure, commerce, territorial defense, and the population that sustains the country. The IRGC carries another calculation into the room: whether the revolutionary order survives, whether its coercive machinery remains intact, whether missile and proxy networks can be rebuilt, and whether domestic challengers can be contained.
The current conflict has exposed the difference. Reuters reported in June that hardliners emerged from months of war believing Iran had won because the system survived. They pressed for rapid rearmament and a tougher approach toward the West even as ordinary Iranians faced damaged infrastructure, inflation, unemployment, and years of accumulated economic hardship.
A country can emerge poorer, more isolated, and physically damaged while the revolutionary establishment concludes that endurance validated its strategy.
That is fertile ground for Russian influence.
Russia’s Useful War
Russia does not need an Iranian battlefield victory to benefit. It needs Iran to remain capable of imposing costs.
Reuters calculated in April that Russia’s largest oil-tax revenue stream was set to double to roughly $9 billion as the Iran war pushed energy prices higher. Russian Urals crude rose from about $44.59 a barrel in February to $77 in March. By June, Reuters reported that U.S.-mediated Ukraine negotiations were on hold while Washington was preoccupied with the Middle East.
American inventories are being consumed as well. The Center for Strategic and International Studies assessed that the Iran campaign depleted key U.S. missile stockpiles and that rebuilding inventories of Tomahawk, THAAD, and Patriot systems could take years.
From Moscow’s perspective, the arithmetic is attractive. American weapons are expended. Ukraine competes for political attention and air-defense interceptors. Global energy disruption raises the value of Russian exports. Washington inherits another expensive military problem.
Iran bears the destruction producing those benefits.
Russia has also limited its own exposure. The 2025 Russia–Iran strategic partnership expanded military and security cooperation, but the agreement contains no mutual-defense guarantee. Moscow can assist Tehran without promising to fight for Tehran.
Confidence Can Matter More Than Firepower
Russian assistance matters because of what it can do to the IRGC’s perception of the war.
Reuters reported in March that Russia was providing Iran targeting information involving U.S. warships and aircraft. By July, U.S. intelligence officials were examining possible Russian assistance in unusually precise Iranian attacks on CIA facilities in the Gulf. A later Reuters investigation said U.S. officials had acknowledged broader Russian targeting and technical support to Iran during the war.
Better intelligence can make Iranian forces appear more survivable. Better targeting demonstrates that American facilities remain vulnerable and gives commanders another reason to believe the next strike can outperform the last.
For an organization whose institutional mythology prizes resistance, surviving an attack becomes evidence for continuing the strategy.
Russia need not promise victory. Keeping alive the possibility that greater endurance will improve Tehran’s position may be enough.
This is the dangerous part of the relationship. Moscow’s assistance can raise IRGC confidence faster than it raises Iran’s underlying strategic strength.
The Counterpoint
The IRGC is not indifferent to Iran. Its personnel are Iranian. Its bases, families, and economic interests are inside the country. Iranian territory is indispensable to the Islamic Republic it exists to protect. Catastrophic state failure would endanger the Revolution as well.
Russia has reasons to avoid that outcome. An uncontrolled Iranian collapse could eliminate a useful partner and create instability near Russia’s southern approaches. Reuters found early in the war that Moscow wanted to preserve Iran while still hedging its position and avoiding tying Russia’s fate to Tehran’s.
But avoiding collapse sets a very low threshold. The more revealing question is how much damage each institution will tolerate before compromise becomes preferable.
That threshold appears considerably higher for the IRGC than for millions of Iranians living with the consequences. It is higher still for Moscow because Russian cities are not absorbing the strikes.
Iran Pays the Bill
The emerging Russia-IRGC relationship is an alignment of institutional incentives.
The Guards need outside support that lets them continue presenting resistance as viable. Russia needs partners capable of diverting American resources and complicating U.S. strategy without requiring Russian troops to enter another war. Both place regime security near the center of strategy.
Iran’s population pays for the overlap.
Washington and its partners should account for that when judging Tehran’s pain threshold. Raising the national cost of war may produce less leverage than expected when the people calculating that cost rank revolutionary survival above economic recovery. The distinction has become more consequential because Reuters reports the IRGC and security chiefs now drive much of Iran’s war strategy and major political decision-making.
The central question is no longer simply how much punishment Iran can endure. It is how much punishment the IRGC believes Iran can endure while the Revolution survives.
Russia has every reason to keep that answer uncomfortably high.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Charles Davis is a military veteran and lecturer with an intelligence background. His military awards include: two Bronze Star Service Medals, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, two Meritorious Service Medals, NATO Service Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Saudi Arabia Liberation Medal, and Kuwait Liberation Medal.
