Leveraging Covert Action and Institutional Fracture to Achieve a Long-Term Strategic Resolution with Iran

For decades, the Islamic Republic has posed persistent threats to the United States across three principal domains: its ballistic missile program, its support for terrorist proxy groups, and, most importantly, its nuclear ambitions. In response, successive American administrations have relied on two recurring strategies, including diplomatic agreements designed to constrain the regime through negotiated limits and verification mechanisms, and maximum-pressure campaigns aimed at forcing behavioral change through sanctions and diplomatic isolation.¹

Yet after more than four decades, neither approach has fully resolved the underlying problem. Diplomatic agreements have, at best, deferred difficult questions, while maximum-pressure campaigns—though at times effective in constraining Iran’s finances and operational reach—have produced largely temporary results. Tehran has repeatedly adapted by developing more sophisticated sanctions-evasion networks while continuing to advance toward the same strategic thresholds these policies sought to prevent.²

The Trump administration has expanded the logic of maximum pressure through what has been described as a mow-the-lawn strategy, combining sustained economic pressure with targeted military strikes to achieve two primary objectives. The first is to degrade Iran’s capabilities to the point that the regime can no longer pose a credible nuclear, proxy, or ballistic missile threat in the intermediate term. The second is to use this sustained pressure to compel Tehran into meaningful concessions at the negotiating table, securing a stringent diplomatic agreement that would prevent the reemergence of those threats over the long term.³ Operation Epic Fury has made significant progress toward achieving the first objective. Iran’s nuclear facilities have been severely damaged, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has suffered substantial losses, and the regime’s military-industrial infrastructure and ballistic missile supply chains have been significantly degraded.⁴

A gap nonetheless remains between achieving discrete military objectives and eliminating the regime’s long-term threats. As the administration considers its next steps, it should avoid repeating policies that have failed to produce a lasting resolution. One underexplored option is covert action focused on engaging and empowering the Artesh, Iran’s conventional military. Such a strategy could strain Tehran’s internal cohesion, deepen fractures within its security apparatus, and create conditions more conducive to meaningful strategic concessions than diplomacy or maximum pressure alone. It may even create space for the Iranian people to once again “take over their institutions.”⁵ The following analysis explores why this approach is necessary, why the Artesh presents a uniquely viable target for covert action, how such a strategy could be implemented, and the broader strategic outcomes it could achieve.

Removing the Regime’s Core Leadership Is Not Enough to Deliver a Long-Term Solution

After 38 days of conflict, Operation Epic Fury ended with extensive damage inflicted on Iran’s military and strategic infrastructure. More than “2,000 command-and-control targets were destroyed or degraded, approximately 85 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile, drone, and naval defense industrial bases were damaged or destroyed, and more than 1,450 strikes were carried out on Iran’s weapons manufacturing facilities.”⁶ The operation additionally eliminated another layer of senior IRGC leadership, most significantly Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.⁷

Yet the regime’s core pillars of power, however weakened, remain intact: the IRGC continues to function, the clerical establishment endures, and another Khamenei has assumed power. In Washington, some hoped that even if these three institutional power centers survived, leadership changes within them might produce a regime more amenable to the Trump administration’s demands. But this expectation rests on a flawed premise—namely, that removing the top echelon of the IRGC, the clerical establishment, or even the Supreme Leader himself would fundamentally erode the institutions underpinning the regime. The reality, however, is quite different.

Why It Is Not Enough: Ideology and Institutional Resilience

From their inception, the IRGC, the clerical establishment, and the office of the Supreme Leader were designed for perpetual conflict. The Islamic Republic’s constitution embeds a mandate for “militant struggle,” reinforcing a permanent security posture and justifying extensive state oversight of the economy and civil society under the rubric of “national security.”⁸

To sustain this system, Iran built a deliberately fragmented governance structure composed of overlapping and redundant institutions. Ministries, councils, and security bodies often duplicate functions, creating parallel chains of authority.⁹ This design prevents institutional capture, encourages internal competition, and allows the Supreme Leader’s office to arbitrate disputes. As a result, even if individual institutions or leaders are weakened, the system remains intact and adaptable.

Politically, this redundancy is expressed through Iran’s layered system of elected and unelected bodies. While the president and Majles are supposedly elected, their authority is constrained by institutions such as the Guardian Council, which vets’ candidates and legislation, and the Expediency Discernment Council, which resolves disputes but remains under the Supreme Leader’s control.¹⁰ Above them, the Office of the Supreme Leader and its embedded representatives ensure ideological and operational alignment across the state.¹¹ Even bodies like the Assembly of Experts operate within constraints set by Guardian Council vetting, limiting genuine institutional independence.

Economically, the same logic applies. Alongside formal ministries, Iran relies on bonyads—large, opaque foundations created from post-revolutionary asset transfers—and IRGC-linked conglomerates such as Khatam al-Anbiya.¹² These entities operate across real estate, energy, infrastructure, and trade, often outside normal oversight mechanisms. Economic authority is distributed through political patronage tied to the Supreme Leader’s office, preventing the consolidation of financial power in any single institution.¹³

The security and intelligence sector is even more fragmented. The IRGC operates alongside the regular military (Artesh), while the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and IRGC Intelligence run parallel—and sometimes competing—intelligence networks.¹⁴ The Basij militia extends this system into society, providing both internal security and grassroots surveillance.¹⁵ Together, these overlapping institutions create redundancy rather than efficiency, ensuring that no single actor can dominate the security apparatus.

The result is a hybrid system that blends decentralization with centralized ideological control. Operational authority is spread across competing institutions, preventing any single center of power from emerging. This structure strengthens regime survival and reduces the effectiveness of decapitation or external strikes. Even significant leadership losses would not dismantle a system designed to persist through fragmentation and sustained by an ideology of militant struggle.

Why It Is Not Enough: The Iran–China Strategic Partnership

China further reinforces this institutional resilience by sustaining Iran’s military and economic capacity under pressure. Beijing has provided missile-related inputs, such as propellants and chemical precursors, along with dual-use components for UAVs and missile systems.¹⁶ Chinese firms have also supplied surveillance and air-defense-related technologies that assist Iran in recovering from strikes and rebuilding operational capacity.¹⁷ Even during periods of active conflict, Chinese-linked supply chains have continued delivering critical components, highlighting Beijing’s role in sustaining Iranian operational resilience.¹⁸ Economically, China remains Iran’s primary sanctions lifeline, purchasing the majority of its crude exports—often through discounted, opaque channels involving front companies and smaller financial institutions operating outside the SWIFT system.¹⁹ This enables Iran to convert oil revenues into usable liquidity for state and IRGC-linked entities.²⁰

This relationship is increasingly embedded in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), within which Iran functions as a key corridor linking China to the Middle East.²¹ Expanding rail, port, and energy infrastructure deepens trade connectivity while providing Iran with alternative routes to bypass international sanctions.²² In effect, BRI integration strengthens both economic resilience and logistical independence.

The Challenge in Summary

The challenge posed by Iran is fundamentally one of institutional resilience and design, reinforced by support from a great-power patron that enables the regime to withstand military strikes and blunt the effects of sanctions. As a result, the regime can survive and repeatedly reemerge as a threat, while coercive measures produce only short- to intermediate-term results and risk trapping successive American administrations in a recurring cycle of having to return and ‘mow the lawn.’ Achieving the Trump administration’s stated objective of a long-term solution, therefore, requires a strategy focused on weakening the regime from within—not solely at the level of its leadership or foundational structures, but at its institutional core—eroding its cohesion and durability from the middle outward rather than relying exclusively on top-down or bottom-up pressure.

Proposed Solution

Within this “middle-out” approach, covert action can shape conditions on the ground by exploiting the regime’s own institutional structure. The regime’s permanent state of internal and external conflict fosters fear and suspicion, particularly toward institutions outside its core pillars: the IRGC, the clerical establishment, and the Supreme Leader’s office. A covert action program that empowers middle-level actors outside these three pillars could therefore amplify existing institutional tensions and disrupt cohesion, coordination, and command-and-control. Among Iran’s security institutions, the only force with sufficient structural capacity to challenge these pillars while remaining relatively independent in ideology and function is the Artesh. Accordingly, leveraging such middle-tier institutions offers the most viable pathway for translating internal fragmentation into sustained strategic pressure on the regime.

Why the Artesh: Inherent and Historic Tensions with the IRGC

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the clerical leadership has viewed the Artesh with deep suspicion due to its legacy as the Shah’s primary military instrument.²³ Under Mohammad Reza Shah, the Artesh was one of the most modern and capable armed forces in the region, benefiting from extensive U.S. training, advanced Western platforms, and significant institutional prestige.²⁴ At the time of the revolution, it consisted of roughly 200,000–240,000 personnel and retained cohesive command structures that many revolutionary leaders feared could still organize a countercoup against the new regime. ²⁵

In response, the Islamic Republic moved quickly to neutralize the institution. Between 1979 and 1982, thousands of senior officers were purged, arrested, or forced into retirement, with estimates commonly placing dismissals and forced removals in the low thousands across command and staff ranks.²⁶ The 1980 Nojeh coup attempt—real or perceived—further accelerated this process, deepening the regime’s perception that the conventional military was politically unreliable and requiring continuous surveillance and restructuring.²⁷

Parallel to these purges, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was created in 1979 as an ideologically loyal force designed explicitly to prevent the emergence of a unified, autonomous military. Unlike the Artesh, whose institutional identity was tied to the Iranian state, the IRGC was structurally anchored to the Islamic Revolution and, later, directly to the Supreme Leader.²⁸ Over time, Iran deliberately developed a dual-military architecture: overlapping chains of command, parallel intelligence organizations, and competing security institutions designed to prevent any single body from accumulating enough power to challenge clerical rule.

The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) entrenched this bifurcation. The Artesh provided the backbone of Iran’s conventional warfare capacity—armor, air force operations, artillery, and static defense—while the IRGC expanded through irregular warfare, ideological mobilization, and human-wave infantry tactics.²⁹ By the end of the war, Iran had suffered an estimated 200,000–500,000 total military and civilian fatalities, and the IRGC had gained disproportionate political capital despite the Artesh carrying much of the conventional burden.³⁰ This divergence institutionalized a hierarchy in which ideological legitimacy increasingly outweighed professional military performance in determining influence and resource allocation.

Today, this structural imbalance is reinforced by persistent resource asymmetries. In Iran’s 2025 defense budget, the IRGC received approximately 311 trillion tomans (roughly $6 billion USD), compared to approximately 177 trillion tomans (roughly $3.4 billion USD) for the Artesh—an allocation ratio of approximately 1.8:1 in favor of the IRGC despite the Artesh maintaining a larger manpower base.³¹ In 2020, the gap was even wider, with IRGC funding estimated at roughly $6.9 billion compared to $2.7 billion for the Artesh, a ratio of approximately 2.5:1.³²

Independent defense analyses estimate that the IRGC controls roughly 60–65 percent of Iran’s effective military capability, while the Artesh accounts for approximately 35–40 percent. This is despite the Artesh fielding around 350,000–420,000 personnel compared to the IRGC’s roughly 190,000 active personnel, plus tens of thousands of Basij auxiliaries.³³

This disparity extends beyond formal budgets. The IRGC maintains extensive off-budget revenue streams through its dominance of large segments of the Iranian economy via entities such as Khatam al-Anbiya, which alone has been estimated to oversee hundreds of subsidiaries across construction, energy, and infrastructure sectors.³⁴ Broader estimates suggest IRGC-affiliated networks exert influence over approximately 20–40 percent of Iran’s economy, including ports, telecommunications, banking, smuggling networks, and sanctions-evasion channels.³⁵

These financial advantages translate into significant disparities in compensation and career mobility. While official salaries for both Artesh and IRGC personnel are generally reported in the range of roughly $150–$300 USD per month (subject to inflation and currency volatility), IRGC personnel typically receive additional benefits through non-transparent channels—including housing access, preferential goods distribution, deployment stipends, and patronage-linked bonuses.³⁶ Senior IRGC officers frequently transition into high-value economic and political positions, while Artesh officers tend to remain within narrowly defined military career tracks with limited access to state-linked wealth networks.³⁷

The equipment gap further reinforces this divide. The IRGC prioritizes Iran’s most advanced asymmetric systems, including ballistic missiles, UAV fleets, cyber capabilities, and electronic warfare units. Its Aerospace Force controls the country’s missile and drone programs, which constitute Iran’s primary strategic deterrent.³⁸ By contrast, the Artesh continues to rely heavily on legacy U.S.-origin platforms such as F-4, F-5, and F-14 aircraft, along with aging armored vehicles and artillery systems dating from the 1970s.³⁹ Many of these platforms remain operational only through cannibalized parts, incremental domestic upgrades, and improvised maintenance under sanctions constraints.

Institutionally, the divergence is equally pronounced. The Artesh fields approximately 350,000–420,000 personnel and remains the backbone of Iran’s territorial defense, yet it is largely excluded from political decision-making.⁴⁰ The IRGC, with roughly 190,000 personnel plus Basij auxiliaries, exerts far greater influence over state institutions.⁴¹ Since the late 1980s, a large majority of Iran’s defense ministers and senior security officials have come from IRGC backgrounds, with IRGC veterans also dominating parliamentary blocs, intelligence leadership, provincial governorships, and major state-linked economic institutions. This has reinforced a structural pattern in which the IRGC functions as both a military and political-economic elite, while the Artesh remains institutionally constrained to a professional defense role.

Why the Artesh: Divergent Mission Sets and Non-Ideological Orientation

The institutional divide is further reinforced by fundamentally different mission sets. The Artesh is primarily responsible for defending Iran’s territorial integrity—securing borders, protecting airspace and maritime approaches, and maintaining readiness against external conventional threats.⁴² Its structure is organized around conventional land, air, and naval forces, with limited involvement in internal security.

By contrast, the IRGC is explicitly tasked with regime security and ideological enforcement, in addition to asymmetric warfare and external influence operations. Its responsibilities include internal suppression, intelligence activities, proxy warfare, and the projection of influence across the region through non-state actors and covert networks.

This distinction has shaped regime behavior during periods of internal unrest. During major protest waves—including the 1999 student protests, the 2009 Green Movement, the 2017–2018 economic protests, and the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests—the regime relied overwhelmingly on the IRGC, Basij forces, and internal security units to manage repression, while keeping the Artesh largely outside domestic policing roles.⁴³ This consistent pattern reflects a deliberate strategic calculation: deploying the conventional military internally risks morale breakdown, unit fragmentation, and the potential politicization of a force not fully ideologically aligned with regime security doctrine.

Why the Artesh: Conscription and Social Embeddedness

The composition of the Artesh further differentiates it from the IRGC. A significant proportion of its manpower consists of conscripts serving mandatory military service—typically 18 to 24 months—drawn broadly from across Iranian society, including urban and rural populations and diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.⁴⁴ This conscription model embeds the Artesh more deeply within society than the IRGC’s more selective recruitment and ideological vetting processes. As a result, Artesh personnel often retain stronger familial and social ties to the general population and are more directly exposed to the economic pressures affecting ordinary Iranians. With inflation rates frequently exceeding 30–40 percent annually in recent years and youth unemployment remaining persistently high, many conscripts and junior personnel experience similar material constraints to the civilian population.⁴⁵

Why Now? The January 2026 Protests and Operation Epic Fury

This structural proximity to society reinforces the Artesh’s identity as a national defense institution rather than an ideological enforcement arm. The more strategically important question, however, is why elements within the Artesh would be willing to cooperate with the United States at all, and what makes the current moment potentially different from previous decades. The answer lies not in the assumption that the Artesh is inherently pro-American or openly anti-regime, but in the convergence of several pressures that may be reshaping internal perceptions of the regime’s balance of power.

The January 2026 protests reflected continued and widespread domestic dissatisfaction with the regime, and—as in previous protest cycles—the harshest crackdowns were reportedly carried out primarily by IRGC-linked units, Basij forces, and internal security agencies. For segments of the Artesh already resentful of the IRGC’s privileged political and economic status, the protests may have further reinforced perceptions that the IRGC functions less as a national defense institution and more as the regime’s primary coercive apparatus.

At the same time, Operation Epic Fury appears to have altered perceptions of the IRGC’s institutional dominance. Expanded joint coordination, integrated logistics, and shared planning frameworks have narrowed the operational divide between the IRGC and the Artesh, reducing some of the institutional separation that historically insulated the conventional military from politically sensitive security functions. More importantly, if the operation is perceived internally as having degraded IRGC capabilities, weakened its aura of invulnerability, or exposed vulnerabilities within its command structure, this could significantly affect how Artesh personnel assess the long-term durability of the existing institutional hierarchy.

These developments do not mean the Artesh is likely to become an openly anti-regime institution. Rather, they may create conditions in which some personnel—particularly within the officer corps and mid-level leadership—become more receptive to quiet forms of cooperation, motivated by institutional self-interest, nationalism, resentment toward IRGC dominance, or concern about the regime’s long-term trajectory.

Case Studies

The United States has historically—particularly during the Cold War—sought to exploit internal fractures within adversary military and security institutions through long-term political warfare rather than rapid institutional subversion.⁴⁶ Rather than direct coercion, these efforts relied on intelligence, media, and cultural channels to weaken confidence in military professionalism by exposing corruption, elite privilege, and ideological contradictions. The broader objective was to undermine the legitimacy and cohesion of coercive institutions, increasing internal friction over time, with results that varied considerably depending on state resilience.

A useful comparative case is the late Soviet system in the 1980s, leading to the USSR’s collapse in 1991. The Soviet Union maintained a dual-security structure in which the regular armed forces operated alongside ideological and internal security organs such as the KGB and political commissars.⁴⁷ This created institutional tension between professional and ideological control. By the mid-to-late 1980s, economic stagnation, the Afghan War, and Gorbachev’s reforms (Perestroika and Glasnost) had weakened state legitimacy and elite cohesion.⁴⁸ As central authority eroded, parts of the military showed hesitation and selective non-compliance—most clearly during the August 1991 attempted coup, when coercive unity fractured decisively.

Similarly, in Portugal (1974), a military-led transition was followed by internal fragmentation that enabled democratization.⁴⁹ In the Philippines (1986), limited elite military defection combined with mass protests rapidly collapsed regime cohesion. In Poland during the 1980s, sustained societal pressure from Solidarity forced gradual elite negotiation without a major military fracture.⁵⁰ Across these cases, democratic transitions occurred when the security apparatus ceased acting as a unified coercive bloc, though the mechanism varied—from military-led transition in Portugal, to elite defection in the Philippines, to negotiated erosion in Poland and the Soviet Union.

However, in cases such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, attempts to encourage defections often produced fragmented security environments, weakening enforcement capacity and contributing to long-term instability.⁵¹ These cautionary examples underscore that the objective is not institutional collapse but strategic leverage: creating sufficient internal pressure to compel meaningful concessions without triggering the kind of security vacuum that produces ungoverned space and regional spillover.

How to Implement

The 2019 Framework

In 2019, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Stabilization Operations, in collaboration with the United Kingdom’s Office for Conflict, Stabilization, and Mediation (formerly the Stabilization Unit), published A Pathway to Defections: An Assessment Framework for Processing Defection and Disengaged Fighters. The framework outlines four phases: (1) profiling and context analysis, to identify and prioritize individuals based on motivations and institutional position; (2) coordination and planning, to align relevant agencies and establish protection and logistical structures; (3) tailored incentives, combining material, legal, and protective assurances calibrated to rank and assessed value; and (4) outreach and communication, to securely convey defection pathways through controlled or encrypted channels.⁵²

Applying the Framework to Iran: Challenges and Adaptations

Applying the framework to Iran requires less structural modification than contextual emphasis-shifting across phases. Phase One requires moving away from broad motivational analysis toward precise institutional filtering, focusing on Artesh officers with command-level authority and relatively lower ideological integration. Open-source biographical data—such as educational background, service history, and command assignments—can be used to map institutional affiliation and identify personnel whose careers reflect professional military norms rather than ideological commitment.

Phase Three requires the most substantial refinement, as material incentives alone are insufficient without credible protection. The central constraint is the high risk of detection and retaliation against individuals and their families, making integrated security and extraction planning essential. This involves combining tailored inducements—including relocation support, financial stabilization, and legal or administrative assurances in a receiving jurisdiction—with pre-planned, secure movement pathways that minimize exposure at each stage. Redundancy across routes, compartmentalization of operational knowledge, and incorporation of family protection protocols are key to reducing vulnerability and ensuring feasibility.

Phase Four faces the most severe constraints due to extensive surveillance, telecommunications monitoring, and periodic internet restrictions or shutdowns. These conditions require reliance on more resilient and decentralized communication methods, including encrypted channels and compartmentalized access systems designed to minimize traceability. Emerging tools such as satellite-based connectivity and peer-to-peer mesh networks may improve resilience during disruptions, though their effectiveness depends on integration with secure external access infrastructure.

Strategic Outcomes

This middle-out approach is advanced as a potential long-term response to the threats posed by the Islamic Republic. A covert outreach program targeting the Artesh would primarily function as an intelligence-generation mechanism, with value that persists across policy directions—whether a future administration maintains sustained pressure or moves toward negotiation. Its core benefit is the creation of a continuous, multi-source intelligence picture that reduces uncertainty about intent, capability, and internal change over time, emphasizing longitudinal visibility over reactivity to isolated events.

This includes operational and military posture intelligence tracking how units are organized, deployed, and sustained over time, using indicators such as training tempo, alert status, force concentration, and recovery of degraded capabilities. Over time, this establishes a baseline of normal activity, making deviations more analytically significant. Logistics and sustainment intelligence captures procurement cycles, maintenance regimes, fuel allocation, and supply-chain performance, helping analysts distinguish routine fluctuation from structural constraint. Technical and signals intelligence examines shifts in communications and command-and-control patterns—including platform changes, altered communications discipline, or irregular signaling—with particular value in identifying systemic shifts below the threshold of observable action.

Geospatial and infrastructure intelligence tracks observable changes such as facility construction, concealment activity, traffic flows, and site repurposing. Human and network intelligence focuses on leadership dynamics and early indicators of cohesion or fragmentation within institutions. Crucially, commanders within these structures would also be actors within the informational environment generated by outreach channels, not merely subjects of analysis. Insights derived from institutional contact points can therefore inform internal decision-making, reveal gaps between official reporting and operational reality, and provide early warning of shifts in cohesion or intent.

Together, these intelligence streams form an integrated framework that supports both coercive pressure and diplomatic engagement strategies. Under a pressure model, they help assess regeneration rates, adaptive capacity, and whether observed degradation is temporary or structural. Under a diplomatic framework, they support verification by identifying gaps between stated commitments and observed behavior. Across both, the key strategic advantage is longitudinal awareness—tracking change over time rather than reacting to isolated events—strengthening early warning and improving confidence in assessments of intent and compliance.

Vafa Fanaii is a research analyst at the National Union For Democracy in Iran where he focuses on the national security threats posed by the Islamic Republic, focusing on the IRGC. He graduated from Chapman University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree from Pepperdine University in public policy. Vafa is an alumnus of SSS Iran. 

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Image: Islamic Republic of Iran Army Day, 2018 (085), April 18, 2018, from SNN TV. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Army_Day,_2018_(085).jpg, used under Wikimedia Commons.

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[50] “The Law on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’s Employment Regulations,” October 13, 1992, Iran Data Portal, Syracuse University, https://irandataportal.syr.edu/revolutionary-guards-employment-law, Chapter 7 (Articles 143–144).

[51] Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), chap. 12.

[52] U.S. Department of State Bureau of Stabilization Operations and UK Office for Conflict, Stabilization, and Mediation, A Pathway to Defections: An Assessment Framework for Processing Defection and Disengaged Fighters (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 2019).