According to two anonymous sources close to the presidential office, Iran’s president privately told Hossein Taeb during an April 4 meeting that IRGC commanders Ahmad Vahidi and Ali Abdollahi were “acting unilaterally” and had “destroyed any remaining chance of a ceasefire,” steering Iran toward “a huge catastrophe.”[s] The boss flagged this story for good reason: it is a significant reported sign—but not a public or on-record confirmation—that Iran’s elected president cannot control the people with the guns.
IRGC Civilian Government: Who Actually Runs Iran?
Iran has a president, a parliament, a cabinet. On paper, it looks like a government. In practice, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has spent decades building a parallel state, and the war with the United States and Israel gave it the pretext to finish the job. The IRGC civilian government relationship is not a partnership. It is a hostage situation with constitutional backing.
Here is what happened in a span of weeks. On March 24, IRGC Commander Vahidi forced President Pezeshkian to appoint Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the body that coordinates Iran’s military, intelligence, and foreign policy.[s] Pezeshkian did not want Zolghadr. He was overruled.[s]
On March 28, Vahidi rejected every candidate Pezeshkian proposed for intelligence minister, including Hossein Dehghan, and declared that all key wartime positions would be “chosen and managed directly by the Guards.”[s] By March 29, Pezeshkian was reportedly demanding that “executive and operational control” over the war return to his civilian government. Vahidi said no.[s]
The Constitution Was Built This Way
This is not a coup in the traditional sense. The IRGC civilian government imbalance is baked into the founding document. Under Article 110 of Iran’s constitution, the Supreme Leader, not the president, holds “supreme command of the Armed Forces” and the sole authority to appoint or dismiss the IRGC’s commander.[s] The president chairs the SNSC, but his decisions require the Supreme Leader’s approval before they carry legal force. When Pezeshkian accused Vahidi of “acting unilaterally,” he was describing how the system was designed to work, not how it was broken.
The problem is that the referee is missing. Mojtaba Khamenei, who became Supreme Leader after his father’s assassination on February 28, has not appeared in public for over 35 days.[s] The IRGC reportedly engineered his selection through a rushed vote and pressure on the Assembly of Experts.[s] With no functioning Supreme Leader to arbitrate, the Guards answer to no one.
What This Means for the Ceasefire
Hours after the SNSC announced a two-week ceasefire on April 8, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar all activated air defenses against incoming Iranian missiles and drones.[s][s] The IRGC civilian government gap makes any negotiation nearly meaningless: the man whose signature the world expects on a deal cannot compel the men who fire the missiles to honor it.
As one analyst put it: “The key variable in the ceasefire is not Ghalibaf, Pezeshkian or Araghchi. It is Vahidi. Without his authorisation, no agreement is possible.”[s]
Meanwhile, more than 40% of Iran’s population lives below the absolute poverty line, with the figure exceeding 50% in Tehran.[s] On March 28, sources reported that Pezeshkian warned total economic collapse could occur within three weeks to a month. The IRGC’s response has been to tighten its grip, not loosen it.
According to two anonymous sources close to the presidential office, President Masoud Pezeshkian privately confronted Hossein Taeb, a powerful figure close to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, during an April 4 meeting they described as an “unusually difficult and highly charged” exchange. Pezeshkian accused IRGC chief commander Ahmad Vahidi and Khatam al-Anbiya commander Ali Abdollahi of “acting unilaterally and driving escalation through attacks on regional countries,” warning that their policies had “destroyed any remaining chance of a ceasefire” and were steering Iran toward “a huge catastrophe.”[s] The boss tipped us to this one, and the instinct was sharp: this anonymous-source account is a significant reported sign—not public or on-record evidence—that the IRGC civilian government divide has become a chasm.
IRGC Civilian Government: A Timeline of Institutional Capture
The sequence of events between late March and early April reveals not isolated friction but systematic displacement of presidential authority:
March 7: Pezeshkian released a video calling for a ceasefire. The IRGC ignored it.[s]
March 24: Vahidi compelled Pezeshkian to appoint Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as SNSC secretary, replacing the slain Ali Larijani. Pezeshkian was openly dissatisfied with the choice.[s] The Washington Institute’s Farzin Nadimi noted that the regime “opted for an old IRGC hand whose career has straddled asymmetric warfare, internal security, institutional coordination, and coercive state management” rather than a diplomat or technocrat.[s]
March 28: Vahidi blocked every intelligence minister nominee Pezeshkian proposed, including Hossein Dehghan, insisting that “all key wartime positions must, for now, be chosen and managed directly by the Guards.”[s]
By March 29: Pezeshkian was reportedly demanding that “executive and operational control” over the conflict return to civilian government. Vahidi refused.[s]
April 4: According to the same anonymous-source account, Pezeshkian privately raised his complaint with Taeb, a former head of the IRGC’s own Intelligence Organization, in what appears to have been a calculated plea to the Guards’ internal opposition, if any exists.[s]
The Guards have, in Iran International’s phrasing, “effectively stripped the government of executive control and erected a security barrier around the core of power.”[s]
The Constitutional Architecture of Powerlessness
The IRGC civilian government imbalance is not a wartime aberration. It is structural. Article 110 of Iran’s constitution assigns the Supreme Leader, not the president, “supreme command of the Armed Forces,” the power to declare war and peace, and sole authority over the IRGC’s commander-in-chief. Article 176 requires Supreme Leader approval for all SNSC decisions. The president chairs the council but his signature alone binds nothing.[s]
Under normal conditions, the Supreme Leader serves as arbiter between elected and military institutions. That arbiter has vanished. Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public for over 35 days since succeeding his assassinated father.[s] The IRGC reportedly engineered his selection by forcing a quick vote and pressuring members of the Assembly of Experts.[s] Jesse Ramsdell, a former DHS geopolitical team lead, wrote that “Pezeshkian appears to have been reduced to a figurehead, making only occasional remarks on the war.”[s]
Who Zolghadr Is and What His Appointment Signals
Zolghadr’s biography reads like a history of the IRGC’s institutional expansion. In 1984, he founded the Ramadan Headquarters, the predecessor to the Quds Force, which he described as operating “on the scale of a government.”[s] He served eight years as IRGC Joint Staff chief, eight more as deputy commander-in-chief, then moved to the Interior Ministry under Ahmadinejad to manage internal security during ethnic unrest and Sunni insurgencies. As Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem reported: “whoever is sitting at the negotiation table will have to get Zolghadr’s approval before anything passes.”[s]
The SNSC ceasefire statement, issued April 7, attributed its authority to “the prudence of the Supreme Leader” rather than to the president. Its operative clause on the Strait of Hormuz conditioned safe passage on “coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces,” creating a toll regime rather than restoring freedom of navigation.[s] Its closing line: “Our hands are on the trigger, and the moment the slightest error is committed by the enemy, it will be responded to with full power.”[s]
The War Made It Worse, Not Better
A common assumption held that military pressure on Iran would weaken the IRGC domestically. The evidence points the other direction. Barbara Slavin of the Stimson Center has argued that Israel’s assassination campaign against IRGC leadership “ironically elevated” a cohort of retired hardliners who are “more hardline, anti-U.S., and anti-Israel than those they replaced” and “less nimble in negotiating an end to the war.”[s]
Former Spanish diplomat Gustavo de Aristegui described the result bluntly: a “dictatorial and mafia-style oligarchy” in which the IRGC “functions simultaneously as an armed force, an economic empire, an intelligence service and a political party,” controlling an estimated 30 to 40 percent of Iran’s GDP.[s] U.S. intelligence, according to Reuters via Just Security, “believes the regime is not at risk of collapse and maintains control over the Iranian people.”[s]
The IRGC civilian government relationship has inverted. It is no longer a question of whether the military wing influences the elected government. The elected government exists at the IRGC’s sufferance. Pezeshkian cannot appoint his own intelligence minister. He cannot choose his own SNSC secretary. He cannot order a ceasefire. He cannot even get the military to stop firing missiles at five countries during a truce his own government accepted.[s]
What Breaks First
Iran’s economy is collapsing. More than 40% of the population lives below the absolute poverty line, exceeding 50% in Tehran.[s] Military personnel are sleeping in the streets, eating expired rations, buying food with their own money after supply lines collapsed.[s] Pezeshkian has warned that total economic collapse is inevitable under current conditions.
The question is whether economic pain translates into IRGC concessions or IRGC entrenchment. Every analyst tracking the IRGC civilian government dynamic reaches the same conclusion: history favors the latter. The Guards’ economic empire, built on sanctions evasion, smuggling, and state capture, does not depend on a functioning civilian economy. It depends on chaos. Every government contract rerouted through Khatam al-Anbiya, every barrel of oil sold through IRGC-controlled channels, every Hormuz transit fee collected at gunpoint strengthens the parallel state at the expense of the one Pezeshkian nominally leads.
The IRGC civilian government capture is not a prediction anymore. It happened, in broad daylight, while the world was watching the missiles. The war did not weaken the Guards at home. It gave them the cover to complete what they had been building for 47 years: a state within a state that no longer needs the state around it.
