During his first term, President Trump made the prudent decision to designate the Islamic Republican Guard Corps. (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Since then, the United Kingdom and the European Union have faced mounting pressure to follow suit. That pressure intensified again last month after the Netherlands released an intelligence report detailing IRGC-backed assassination plots that have emerged throughout the western world in recent years.
Reza Pahlavi, the son and would-be heir to the dictator who was deposed in Iran’s 1979 revolution, has openly tethered his political fortunes to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (IRGC). This military wing of Tehran’s regime was established by Ayatollah Khomeini. Its mandate is to protect and defend the Islamic Republic. As such, Pahlavi is most certainly an individual that the U.S. should not support. Doing so would usher in a prolific amount of frying pan and fire metaphors.
In a 2018 interview, Pahlavi declared: “I am in bilateral contact with the army, IRGC, and Basij [militia]. We are in touch. They declare their readiness and express their desire to align with the people.” He made no effort to reconcile that supposed readiness with the IRGC’s readiness to open fire on those same people — something that would be put to the test the following year when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the speedy suppression of protests over an increase in government-set gasoline prices, leading to 1,500 deaths in the space of a few days.
Iran’s so-called crown prince made no effort to reduce his contacts with the IRGC in the wake of that crackdown, nor in the wake of the crackdown on the next great uprising in 2022, wherein another 750 protesters were killed. A study by the Iranian American associations in March 2025, pointed out that “almost all of Pahlavi’s senior advisors and confidants are individuals with past affiliations to the Islamic Republic’s intelligence or military apparatus — and, crucially, to the IRGC.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently posted a “message to Iran” that underscored American awareness of the lethal support that its Islamist regime continues to provide to militant proxies in the surrounding region, including the Houthis in Yemen who have been carrying out indiscriminate attacks on commercial shipping since 2023.
“You know very well what the US military is capable of — and you were warned,” Hegseth wrote on the same day as it was reported a fourth round of nuclear negotiations with the Islamic Republic had been postponed. “You will pay the consequence at the time and place of our choosing.”
Gage Skidmore
Jesus Christ is King
