Goldie Ghamari - May 23, 2026


Who Controls Iran？


Episode Stats


Length

35 minutes

Words per minute

123.85966

Word count

4,408

Sentence count

212

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

81

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Who is really in charge in Iran right now? Is it the supreme leader or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? Who is making the decisions inside the Islamic Republic Occupating Iran? And who is the real power behind the scenes of the Islamic regime?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.560 I want to answer one of the most important questions in the Middle East right now.
00:00:06.120 And it's a question that every Western government, every journalist, every analyst, every policymaker,
00:00:13.880 and quite frankly, every person who cares about Iran and the Middle East needs to be asking.
00:00:20.860 Who is really running Iran right now?
00:00:25.040 There's tremendous discord.
00:00:27.200 there's tremendous, they're having a tremendous problem getting along with each other in Iran.
00:00:32.800 The leadership is very disjointed. It's got two to three groups, maybe four,
00:00:38.800 and it's a very disjointed leadership. And with that being said, they all want to make a deal,
00:00:45.040 but they're all messed up. Not who has the title, not who appears on state television,
00:00:52.000 not who the Islamic regime wants the world to believe is in charge
00:00:57.200 and not who Western diplomats are told to meet and negotiate with
00:01:02.200 not who reads a statement from a podium
00:01:04.980 not who wears a turban
00:01:07.240 not who signs the papers
00:01:09.180 not who sits at the top of the official chart
00:01:13.220 the real question is much deeper than that
00:01:17.640 Who is actually making the decisions inside the Islamic Republic occupying Iran right now?
00:01:25.380 Who's deciding whether the regime escalates or back down?
00:01:29.680 Who's deciding whether nuclear negotiations continue or in this case have collapsed?
00:01:36.460 Who decides whether enriched uranium stays inside occupied Iran or leaves occupied Iran?
00:01:43.620 Who decides whether the Strait of Hormuz becomes a bargaining chip?
00:01:48.760 Who decides whether the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also known as the IRGC, activates its proxy network?
00:01:57.760 Who decides whether the Islamic regime cracks down harder on protesters, women, dissidents, students, workers, and political prisoners, just like we've seen happen this past day?
00:02:12.100 Because in a dictatorship, the person who speaks is not always the person who rules.
00:02:18.280 And in a revolutionary security state like the Islamic Republic occupying Iran, the official structure is almost never the same thing as the real structure behind the scenes.
00:02:32.080 And that's the mistake that Western media makes over and over again.
00:02:36.900 They look at Iran and describe it as if it's a normal country with normal institutions, normal elections, normal ministers, normal presidents, normal courts, normal military leaders, and normal political debates.
00:02:51.540 When in reality, the Islamic Republic occupying Iran is not a normal government at all. 0.94
00:02:59.320 It is the farthest thing from normal. 0.90
00:03:02.320 The Islamic Republic occupying Iran is an ideological occupation regime sitting on top of an ancient Iranian nation. 0.79
00:03:13.780 It's an Islamic clerical dictatorship that has become increasingly dependent on a military security machine, a.k.a. the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
00:03:24.680 It's a revolutionary mafia state that uses religion as a costume, terrorism as foreign policy, hostage-taking as diplomacy, oil and shipping as leverage, and the Iranian people as human shields to ensure its own survival. 0.90
00:03:42.300 And the reason that this video that I'm making today matters is that right now, the Islamic Republic occupying Iran is going through one of the most, if not the most dangerous phase in its entire history. 0.82
00:03:59.440 Because the Islamic regime is no longer just a clerical dictatorship in the traditional sense.
00:04:05.040 It's increasingly becoming a wartime security state where the IRGC and a narrow circle of hardline commanders, or, you know, whatever's left of them, thanks to President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, appear to be making the most important decisions.
00:04:24.260 Reuters reported in April 2026 that wartime pressure had concentrated power inside a narrower hardline circle rooted in the Supreme National Security Council, the Supreme Leader's Office, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
00:04:41.120 And that Mojtaba Khamenei, the cardboard Ayatollah, who we don't even know if he's alive or not, has remained formally at the apex of the system, while sources inside of occupied Iran have described his role as largely legitimizing decisions made by IRGC generals rather than personally directing them himself.
00:05:07.140 That is the key to this entire video.
00:05:11.120 Because if Mojtab al-Khamenei is the face, or, you know, the AI-generated cardboard face,
00:05:17.500 but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the machine,
00:05:21.540 then the world is not dealing with a supreme leader in the old sense,
00:05:26.160 the way they were with Khamenei, his father. 0.86
00:05:29.060 The world is dealing with an Islamic regime where the man at the top
00:05:33.960 probably is not the man in control and where the clerics may still provide religious cover and
00:05:40.680 where the president, Pizishkion, may still provide the appearance of government. But where the real
00:05:48.440 decisions increasingly appear to be coming from are the men with the missiles, the guns, the prisons,
00:05:55.800 the intelligence networks, the proxy militias, the smuggling routes, and the economic empires.
00:06:01.920 Essentially, the decisions are coming from whoever is controlling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
00:06:09.160 Corps. And that changes everything. It changes how we understand the nuclear talks. It changes
00:06:17.220 how we understand the Islamic regime's threats against Israel. It changes how we understand
00:06:23.400 the IRGC's behavior in the Persian Gulf. It changes how we understand the crackdown against
00:06:30.740 the Iranian people who are fighting for freedom and democracy and trying to overthrow the Islamic
00:06:37.460 regime. It changes how we understand the current succession crisis, and it also changes how we
00:06:45.240 understand the future of the Islamic Republic occupying Iran itself. I want to take you through
00:06:53.200 the real power map of the Islamic Republic occupying Iran, and I will explain the official
00:06:59.440 structure versus the real structure. I'm going to talk about Mojtab al-Khamenei, the cardboard
00:07:06.260 supreme dictator, and whether he is truly in control or whether he's being used as a symbol.
00:07:13.380 I mean, assuming that he's even alive. I'm also going to talk about the Islamic Revolutionary
00:07:18.000 Guard Corps and how it has become not just a military force, but the Islamic regime itself.
00:07:25.720 And I will also explain why the president, Pazishkian, is far less powerful than Western audiences often assume.
00:07:36.260 I'm going to explain why the Islamic regime clerics and mullahs still matter. 0.74
00:07:42.200 However, not as much anymore, because the guns are becoming much more important than the turbans.
00:07:49.300 And most importantly, I'm going to explain what this means for the Iranian people.
00:07:55.140 because at the center of all of this, it's not just institutions and titles and factions and
00:08:01.620 councils, but millions of Iranian people who are being held hostage by an Islamic regime
00:08:08.960 that does not represent them, does not love them, does not serve them, and does not have
00:08:15.820 the consent of the Iranian people it claims to govern. I'm Goldie Gamari, and you're watching 0.99
00:08:22.680 The Goldie Show.
00:08:25.140 so let's begin with the basic question when we say Iran who are we actually talking about
00:08:40.080 because one of my biggest pet peeves and one of the biggest problems in western coverage
00:08:46.100 is that journalists and politicians constantly say Iran when they actually mean the Islamic
00:08:53.260 Republic. They'll say Iran wants this, Iran threatened that, Iran is negotiating, Iran is
00:09:01.120 escalating, Iran is backing Hezbollah, Iran is enriching uranium, Iran is destabilizing the 0.68
00:09:07.400 region. But that language is wrong. And it's not just a small mistake. It's a major moral and
00:09:15.560 political mistake because Iran is not the Islamic Republic that's occupying it. Iran is an ancient 0.92
00:09:25.100 civilization. Iran is the people. Iran is the history. Iran is poetry, language, culture, food,
00:09:35.320 architecture, the music, families, students, workers, artists, the dissidents, the grieving
00:09:43.080 mothers, political prisoners, the exiles, and the millions of people who have been fighting
00:09:49.540 this Islamic regime for decades. Iran has existed for thousands of years before the Islamic regime
00:09:58.880 took over in 1979. In fact, Iran has existed for thousands of years before Islam was invented.
00:10:05.780 The Iranian identity is completely separate from the Islamic identity. 0.94
00:10:13.560 The Islamic Republic is the occupying structure that captured the Iranian state in 1979 0.97
00:10:20.840 and has been fighting, murdering, and oppressing the Iranian people ever since.
00:10:28.440 That distinction matters because if you confuse Iran with the Islamic Republic,
00:10:33.740 then you end up blaming the Iranian people for the crimes of the Islamic regime that is oppressing them.
00:10:43.600 So throughout this video, when I say the Islamic Republic occupying Iran, 0.82
00:10:49.800 that's intentional because this Islamic regime is not Iran. 0.86
00:10:55.040 In fact, it is completely anti-Iranian. 0.81
00:11:03.740 It's the Islamic regime that has taken Iran hostage. 0.59
00:11:22.480 And once you understand that, the question, who runs Iran, becomes more precise. 0.86
00:11:29.400 We're not asking who represents the Iranian people. 0.77
00:11:33.220 Because the answer is obvious, this regime does not. And in fact, the only true representative 1.00
00:11:40.880 of the Iranian people is the Crown Prince of Iran, His Royal Highness Reza Pahlavi.
00:11:47.460 But I'll save that for another video. In this video, we're asking who controls the occupying
00:11:55.480 islamic regime who controls the islamic regime machine who controls the guns who controls the 0.76
00:12:04.120 prisons who controls the money who controls the intelligence services who controls the decision 0.70
00:12:12.840 making process that is the real question now officially the islamic republic occupying iran
00:12:22.280 has institutions that sound familiar to western audiences it has a president it has a parliament
00:12:29.880 it has a judiciary it has ministers it has councils and elections or as we iranians call them
00:12:38.440 selections it has a fake constitution it has public officials who give interviews and make speeches
00:12:45.960 and attend summits and issue statements so if you're watching from canada the united states
00:12:51.720 Britain, Australia, or Europe, it can be very easy to assume that these institutions work in a
00:12:58.900 somewhat familiar way. You hear the word president and you think of someone like the president of
00:13:05.100 the United States. You hear the word parliament and you think of a legislature that represents
00:13:10.960 voters. You hear the word election and you think of people choosing their leaders in a legitimate
00:13:17.900 process. You hear the word judiciary and you think of courts that are supposed to be independent.
00:13:25.360 However, in the Islamic regime that's been occupying Iran, these words do not mean what 0.69
00:13:32.640 they mean in a democratic society. These institutions do exist, but they don't function
00:13:39.180 the way free institutions function in a democratic secular society. The elections exist, but the
00:13:46.660 People are not really free to choose real alternatives because only people that are approved by the supreme dictator of the Islamic Republic are allowed to run for office.
00:13:59.460 The parliament exists, but it's not sovereign. It answers to the clerical supreme council and the supreme dictator itself.
00:14:09.000 The president exists, but he's not actually the commander in chief. He's basically a low level puppet.
00:14:16.660 of the supreme dictator. The courts exist, but they're certainly not independent guardians
00:14:22.440 of justice. In fact, the courts are pretty much killing machines, and their whole purpose
00:14:29.580 is to mass-execute Iranians who try to rise up and overthrow the Islamic regime. 0.99
00:14:37.660 The Constitution exists, but it's built around the supremacy of unelected Islamic religious 0.91
00:14:44.660 and security institutions. And this is where Western audiences need to understand one of 0.80
00:14:50.860 the core truths of the Islamic regime that's occupying Iran. The system is designed so 0.97
00:14:57.180 that unelected power dominates elected appearance. The Islamic regime occupying Iran uses elections,
00:15:05.680 or as we call them, selections, to create the illusion of popular participation. But 0.85
00:15:11.940 it uses unelected institutions to make sure that real power never leaves the hands of the ideological
00:15:19.840 core. That's why the Guardian Council matters. That's why the Supreme Leader's Office, or whatever's
00:15:28.240 left of it, matters. That's why the Judiciary matters. I mean, that's why the IRGC, also known
00:15:35.420 as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps matters. That's why the Supreme National Security Council
00:15:42.300 matters. That's why the intelligence services matter. All 17 of them that were created to not
00:15:49.680 only spy on the Iranian people, but to spy on one another. Because again, we're dealing with a 1.00
00:15:56.460 totalitarian dictatorship. Because the Islamic Republic is not built on the sovereignty of the 0.95
00:16:03.420 Iranian people. It's built on the sovereignty of the Islamic regime. The Iranian people are not
00:16:11.480 citizens in the democratic sense. They are subjects to be managed. They are hostages to be 0.99
00:16:19.160 controlled, monitored, punished, mobilized when useful, silenced when inconvenient, and terrorized
00:16:27.200 when they resist the Islamic regime. That is why when Western media says Iran held an election,
00:16:35.260 I always want people to ask, well, who was allowed to run in the first place? Who approved the
00:16:41.380 candidates? Who disqualified the real opposition? Who controls the ballot process? Who controls the
00:16:48.700 courts? Who controls the armed forces? Who controls the prisons? Who controls state media? 0.97
00:16:58.340 Who controls the internet, which by the way has been shut down for over 80 days,
00:17:05.360 silencing the voices of 90 million Iranians from the outside world? Who controls the Islamic 0.99
00:17:13.020 morality police that goes around policing how women are dressed. And as we saw in 2022, 0.98
00:17:22.100 they beat Mahsa Amini to death because she wasn't wearing her mandatory hijab properly.
00:17:29.780 Who controls the intelligence apparatus? Because once you ask these questions, the illusion
00:17:37.220 completely disappears. You begin to see that the official structure is only on the surface and
00:17:44.180 underneath is the real power structure. And that real power structure is not democratic.
00:17:52.060 It's not accountable. It's not transparent. It's not representative. It is an unelected
00:17:58.500 security clerical network designed to preserve the Islamic Republic occupying Iran at all costs.
00:18:07.220 and that phrase at all costs is not an exaggeration. This brutal Islamic regime has shown 0.72
00:18:16.980 again and again that it is willing to sacrifice the Iranian economy, the Iranian environment, 0.99
00:18:24.580 Iranian women, Iranian children, Iranian workers, Iranian students, Iranian political prisoners,
00:18:32.420 and Iranian national interests in order to protect itself.
00:18:39.340 Just a few months ago, on January 8 and 9,
00:18:43.060 when millions of Iranian people took to the streets,
00:18:47.220 rising up in peaceful protest,
00:18:49.660 calling for the end of the Islamic regime
00:18:52.400 and calling for the return of the Crown Prince of Iran,
00:18:56.280 His Royal Highness Reza Pahlavi,
00:18:58.000 to transition Iran from an Islamic dictatorship 0.99
00:19:01.380 to a functioning secular democratic society, the Islamic regime itself unleashed utter hell on the 0.65
00:19:09.320 Iranian people, slaughtering over 40,000 innocent, peaceful, and unarmed Iranians in the span of two
00:19:17.680 days alone on January 8 and 9. The Islamic regime occupying Iran is willing to impoverish
00:19:24.880 the country to fund its foreign jihadi Islamic Muslim terrorist proxies. The Islamic regime is 0.95
00:19:33.340 prepared to isolate the country and the Iranian people to maintain some false sense of Islamic 0.95
00:19:41.280 ideological purity. The Islamic regime executes protesters and innocent Iranians every day to 0.65
00:19:50.000 scare the rest of the Iranian nation into submission. The Islamic regime censors the
00:19:56.420 internet to control information. The Islamic regime forces Islamic hijab on women regardless 0.99
00:20:04.000 of their religion because it understands that control over women's bodies is one of the 0.95
00:20:09.560 foundations of its power. The Islamic regime will use its geography, nuclear program, oil, 1.00
00:20:17.100 and military capacity as bargaining chips if that means regime survival. So if we want to 0.99
00:20:25.640 understand who's really running occupied Iran right now, we have to stop looking only at the
00:20:32.540 title at the top and start looking at the survival machinery underneath. And that brings us to
00:20:40.560 Mojtaba Khamenei, the cardboard supreme dictator. Now, Mojtaba Khamenei is important, the cardboard 0.85
00:20:48.540 supreme dictator, but not perhaps in the way the Islamic regime wants you to believe. He's important
00:20:56.080 because according to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, he provides continuity for a system
00:21:03.900 that is terrified of appearing weak, divided, or leaderless. And that's why the Islamic
00:21:10.720 Revolutionary Guard Corps, their generals, their commanders, their top leadership, or you know,
00:21:15.640 whatever's left of them, pushed very hard to have Mojtab al-Khamenei become the new supreme dictator
00:21:22.200 of the Islamic regime, even though we don't even know if he's alive or not. And that's because of
00:21:29.060 his continuity, where he is the son of the former supreme dictator, Ali Khamenei, who was exterminated
00:21:36.380 by the United States and Israel on February 28. And by the way, we Iranians were forever grateful
00:21:42.180 to the United States and Israel for doing that. But I have a feeling the reason that the Islamic 1.00
00:21:48.760 Revolutionary Guard Corps pushed so hard to have the cardboard dictator become the new supreme 0.79
00:21:56.620 leader of the Islamic regime occupying Iran is because they can use him as a way to control the 0.67
00:22:04.340 entire system. Because it is incredibly strange that we have not seen any proof of life of the 0.96
00:22:13.760 current supreme dictator. In fact, he didn't even attend his own swearing-in ceremony. However,
00:22:21.580 we have to be careful not to confuse symbolic importance with independent power. And that's
00:22:28.740 why Mujtaba Khamenei's rise to become the third supreme dictator of the Islamic regime occupying
00:22:34.900 Iran is very controversial. Because not only do we not know if he's alive or dead or in a coma
00:22:42.920 or a piece of cardboard, but because the Islamic regime occupying Iran claims to be a religious
00:22:49.960 republic, not a hereditary system. And yet the idea that the son of Ali Khamenei, the previous
00:22:58.080 supreme dictator, inheriting the highest position in the system, when we don't even know if he's
00:23:04.600 alive or dead, and we haven't seen any proof of life, that exposes the hypocrisy at the heart 0.92
00:23:12.120 of the Islamic regime. For years, Iranians warned that this was the direction that the Islamic 0.97
00:23:19.300 regime could take. Iranians have been saying that the Islamic regime occupying Iran, which took over
00:23:26.100 our country back in 1979 and turned Iran into a 7th century Islamic hellhole, has been quietly
00:23:34.100 creating its own corrupt dynastic succession. Just think about it. The son of the former supreme 1.00
00:23:42.720 dictator, operating behind the scenes, I mean, assuming he's alive, by the way, surrounded by
00:23:49.200 Islamic revolutionary guard core security networks. And he's there without the consent of the people,
00:23:55.620 without a real public mandate, without democratic legitimacy, and without the higher religious
00:24:00.860 standing traditionally associated with the position, because the guy's not even an ayatollah.
00:24:06.240 And now all of a sudden, he becomes the central figure?
00:24:11.240 He becomes the head of the Islamic regime?
00:24:16.080 This happened because he is useful to the regime's continuity.
00:24:22.100 He is useful to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
00:24:26.500 the mechanism that is actually currently controlling Iran.
00:24:31.260 Mosh Talm al-Khamenei was a mid-ranking cleric.
00:24:33.880 I mean, sure, he had deep ties to the security establishment and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but that's only because he was the son of the former supreme dictator.
00:24:45.100 It was reported that he operated mostly behind the scenes.
00:24:49.260 We never really saw or heard from him.
00:24:51.760 In fact, there's only one video that I know of where we actually hear his voice.
00:24:57.700 And that tells you a lot.
00:24:59.760 because Mojtaba is not a national leader in any normal sense. He's not someone who built
00:25:07.960 legitimacy through the people. He is just as illegitimate as the entire Islamic regime 1.00
00:25:15.280 occupying Iran itself. He doesn't even have public confidence, and he's not someone who's 0.99
00:25:21.820 inspired a country. He's not someone who can stand before the Iranian people and say, 0.95
00:25:27.880 I represent you. We don't even know if he can stand at all. We don't even know if he's alive. 0.91
00:25:34.660 He can't say any of that. Because not only do we not know if he's alive or dead,
00:25:40.900 but the Islamic regime in and of itself does not represent the Iranian people. 0.86
00:25:48.480 He represents the continuity of the Islamic regime, which is an occupying force that has
00:25:54.920 been occupying Iran since 1979. That is how his role must be understood in the context of the
00:26:03.700 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Because if Mojtaba was a truly powerful independent leader,
00:26:11.200 the question would be simple. Where is he? Why is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps content
00:26:18.860 to pretend like Mojtaba Khamenei is alive? And why are they content to pretend like he's
00:26:27.320 controlling the Islamic regime? Why are they content that there has been no sign of life
00:26:35.460 or proof of life from the current supreme dictator of the Islamic regime?
00:26:42.500 That tells you something. That tells you that the authority of the current supreme dictator
00:26:48.640 doesn't come from the supreme dictator himself. It comes from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
00:26:55.200 Corps. It comes from the military commanders who are using and taking advantage of his name
00:27:02.220 to push and promote their own agenda. They're using Mojtab al-Khamenei to advance their own
00:27:10.280 policy decisions. And they're using the cardboard supreme dictator to control the country. And
00:27:18.360 that's why the supreme dictator of the Islamic regime occupying Iran is not the commander of
00:27:25.540 the system. He's the symbol that allows the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders
00:27:30.460 and generals to rule behind the scenes. He is the name at the top while the Islamic Revolutionary
00:27:38.580 Guard Corps writes the policy and dictates the terms. His face, or what's left of it,
00:27:45.060 is the religious political cover that's helping the military faction maintain the appearance
00:27:52.200 of continuity. And that's why the current situation in occupied Iran is so dangerous.
00:27:58.820 Because when the person at the top lacks strong personal legitimacy, or I mean,
00:28:05.860 lacks being alive or not, again, we don't even know if he's alive or not.
00:28:10.020 But when the person at the top is nowhere to be found, the institutions around him become
00:28:16.600 more powerful. And in the Islamic regime occupying Iran, the most powerful institution is the Islamic 0.90
00:28:25.600 Revolutionary Guard Corps. So let's talk about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
00:28:31.060 The IRGC is not simply a branch of the armed forces. That's one of the biggest misunderstandings
00:28:38.500 in Western conversations about occupied Iran. When people hear revolutionary guards, they often
00:28:45.220 imagine something like the army, navy, or air force in a normal country. But the IRGC is not
00:28:52.620 a normal military institution. The regular army in Iran, called the Artish, was historically
00:28:59.840 designed to defend the country. However, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was created
00:29:06.480 in 1979 after the evil demonic ayatollahs took over the country in a coup d'etat.
00:29:14.060 It was created in 1979 to defend the Islamic Revolution itself. And in the language of the 0.96
00:29:21.120 Islamic regime occupying Iran, defending the revolution is not the same thing as defending
00:29:27.820 the Iranian people. In fact, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was created to defend
00:29:34.720 the Islamic regime from the Iranian people. It means defending the Islamic regime, 0.90
00:29:42.940 defending its Islamic ideology, defending the system that it created in 1979, and defending 0.95
00:29:51.720 the revolutionary Islamist project that the Islamic regime has tried to export across the
00:29:59.100 region. And that is why the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is central. It is a military force, 0.95
00:30:05.880 but it's also an ideological army. It's an intelligence network, a domestic repression
00:30:13.820 machine, a foreign operations apparatus, an economic empire, a smuggling network,
00:30:21.680 a sanctions evasion machine. It's a political kingmaker, a proxy manager. It's essentially
00:30:31.100 a state within the state and increasingly it appears to be the state itself. When the Islamic 1.00
00:30:40.260 regime needs to crush Iranian people, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij are there 1.00
00:30:47.640 to get the job done. When the Islamic regime needs to intimidate university students, security forces 1.00
00:30:54.520 are there. When the Islamic regime needs to threaten the Persian Gulf, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard 0.95
00:31:00.920 Corps are there. When the Islamic regime is arming militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza, and 0.94
00:31:09.360 beyond, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force is there to do the job. When the Islamic 0.97
00:31:16.920 regime needs to move money, weapons, drones, missiles, or technology through its shadow 0.88
00:31:23.640 networks, IRGC-linked structures are there to do the job. And when the Islamic regime 0.83
00:31:31.040 needs to protect itself from the Iranian people that it has held hostage for the last 47 years, 0.90
00:31:38.820 the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the backbone. So when people ask who's running Iran, 0.59
00:31:45.040 one answer becomes unavoidable. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not just protecting
00:31:51.760 the regime. The IRGC has become the main organ of the Islamic regime. And in a wartime environment,
00:32:00.540 which we find ourselves in right now, that role becomes even stronger because war changes the
00:32:07.640 balance of power inside authoritarian systems. In peacetime, dictatorships may allow some space
00:32:16.080 for civil administrators, technocrats, diplomats, and politicians to pretend like they matter.
00:32:23.280 But in wartime, everything becomes about national security. Economic decisions become security
00:32:29.980 decisions foreign policy becomes security policy media becomes propaganda protests become security 0.99
00:32:38.940 threats women's rights become a threat to the existence of the islamic regime itself labor 0.70
00:32:45.980 strikes become threats to the islamic regime university students and universities become 0.81
00:32:52.060 security threats political prisoners are security threats and negotiations become security maneuvers 0.60
00:33:01.980 and when everything becomes about security the security establishment becomes the real government
00:33:09.820 and that's why the islamic regime's current power structure matters so much because the irgc is
00:33:17.340 dominating military strategy and key political decisions. That means the world is not dealing 0.77
00:33:24.840 with a normal diplomatic counterpart. It's dealing with a brutal totalitarian Islamic regime 0.98
00:33:30.800 whose foreign ministry may speak, but whose security establishment actually decides. And that 0.86
00:33:39.540 distinction is critical. That's why President Trump is always saying that when his team are
00:33:47.460 speaking with them, they say one thing, but then they go back and they change the message completely.
00:33:55.160 Because when the Foreign Affairs Ministry says one thing, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
00:34:00.460 Corps does the complete opposite, which institution matters more, the Foreign Affairs Ministry or the
00:34:08.140 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. When the Islamic regime president speaks about diplomacy, 0.61
00:34:13.940 but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls escalation, who's really driving policy?
00:34:20.940 If Mushtab al-Khamenei, or whatever's left of him, is putting out decisions or foreign policy
00:34:27.920 statements, but his words are actually shaped and are coming from the IRGC commanders, well,
00:34:35.820 who's really running the show and who's really ruling the country. This is why in an authoritarian
00:34:42.020 system like the Islamic regime occupying Iran, titles are not enough. You have to follow the 0.93
00:34:50.060 power. There's still a lot more to cover and I haven't even spoken about the Supreme National
00:34:55.260 Security Council yet. But I'll save that for another video because I feel like I've already
00:35:00.160 covered a lot of ground when it comes to the Islamic regime apparatus, who's running the show
00:35:07.120 and who's really in control of Iran. If you like this video, make sure to like, subscribe and share
00:35:14.880 so others can get the real news about Iran and occupied Iran from an actual Iranian who knows 0.57
00:35:22.020 what's going on. And let me know in the comments, who do you think is in control of occupied Iran?
00:35:28.060 Is it the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or do you think I'm totally off base?
00:35:34.180 And now you know.