Australia has announced that it will list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group, after the country’s intelligence agency determined that it had directed at least two attacks against Australia’s Jewish community.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Australia’s domestic spy agency had “credible intelligence” that attacks against a synagogue in Melbourne and Jewish restaurant in Sydney were “directed by the IRGC.”
The Iranian ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, will be expelled and Australia’s embassy in Tehran will suspend operations.
Who are the IRGC?
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are one of the most feared and powerful organisations in Iran, whose influence stretches beyond military and intelligence to politics, education and the economy.
Established after the 1979 Islamic revolution, the IRGC operates separate to – and often contrary to – Iran’s traditional military. It is an elite force, loyal to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has grown in size and power over the decades.
With ground troops numbering more than 150,000, the IRGC also runs its own navy and air force, separate from Iran’s regular armed forces. It oversees the country’s ballistic missile programme, once regarded as the largest in the Middle East but which was widely incapacitated during Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites in June.
Have other countries sanctioned the IRGC?
The US designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organisation in 2019, during Donald Trump’s first administration. Canada followed in 2024. The EU and UK have indicated that they plan to list the IRGC but have yet to do so.
The US state department has accused the IRGC of being directly involved in terrorist plotting. In 2024, Argentina’s highest criminal court blamed the IRGC and Hezbollah for a 1994 attack against a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires which killed 85 people. Iran has said it was not involved.
In 2020, an IRGC missile operator shot down a Ukraine Airlines flight moment after it took off from Tehran airport, killing 176 people. An IRGC official said the plane had been misidentified as a cruise missile.
In 2024, an IRGC official was among three men charged in the US over an attempted plot to kidnap and assassinate an Iranian-American journalist in New York. All three men were based in Iran and remain at large.
How influential are the IRGC in Iran’s domestic politics?
Former IRGC officers have held key positions in Iran’s politics and the group’s mandate to protect “revolutionary values” has seen it become a powerful force in policing social and cultural issues in the country.
Overseen by the supreme leader, the IRGC is often seen as more powerful than the country’s president and are thought to have more sway on foreign policy.
The group oversees some educational institutions and has pushed research into aerospace and drone technology to advance its military capabilities. It has economic interests that span construction and telecommunications to oil and gas projects – and it’s thought the IRGC is behind the vast network of shadow tankers that has seen Iran circumvent western sanctions on its oil exports.
What role does it play internationally?
The Quds Force is responsible for the IRGC’s overseas operations. It has sponsored and armed groups across the Middle East, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
Known in Tehran as the Axis of Resistance, these groups helped to push Iran’s influence abroad, but have been dismantled and degraded to varying degrees over the course of almost two years of conflict with Israel, after the 7 October attacks and the start of the war in Gaza.
The Quds force itself has also suffered major blows, with many of its most senior commanders killed in Israel’s attacks on Iran in June. Qassem Suleimani, the feared and renowned commander of the Quds force, was killed by a US drone strike in 2020.
