Word: sepah
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Khomeini's successor as Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, continued to show the guards love, ensuring they got the latest military hardware and best facilities. They even set up their own university. Now the guard - sepah in Farsi - has evolved into what a study by the Rand Corp.'s National Defense Research Institute describes as an "expansive socio-political-economic conglomerate whose influence extends into virtually every corner of Iranian political life and society." Its commercial interests run into the billions of dollars and range from massive infrastructure projects to laser eye surgery. And in addition to the Intelligence Ministry, guardsmen...
...IRGC's rise presents both threats and opportunities. The sepah is responsible for the very things that most concern Washington: Iran's drive for nuclear weapons and its support of terrorism. Guardsmen hold several key positions in the Supreme National Security Council, through which they are thought to control the levers of Iran's nuclear and missile programs. And an IRGC unit known as the Quds Force provides training and weapons to Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and the Mahdi Army in Iraq. But some analysts think that growing commercial interests may have taken the edge...
...Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), or Sepah for short in Farsi, is widely believed to have played a large role in orchestrating the crackdown on political dissidents and protesters following the disputed presidential election. Its political influence within the regime has always far exceeded the actual army's, and it has increased exponentially since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to office in 2005. But the speculation among Iranian opposition sources is that, these days, the IRGC's powerful patron - whose second term officially began last week - has now become its puppet, falling under the influence of a gang of security...
While tourists do come by the walls to stare inside, the place is not open for sightseeing. The compound has a more important function for the Iranian government. The regime's shock troops, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, referred to as Sepah in Farsi, use the main building - which resembles a high school gym in shape and size - to train its members. For the past month, they have participated in the government's brutal response to mass demonstrations by beating protesters in the streets with truncheons and overseeing the notorious Basij militia, a paramilitary group that has been accused...
...Former Sepah founder Sazegara concurs, adding that many of the plainclothes men controlling the streets and meting out excessive violence to protesters are "intelligence personnel of the Sepah, some of them even with military degrees, but showing up in plainclothes to take on the appearance of the Basij...