Iran after the war: Victorious or defeated, how will IRGC take revenge

If Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) emerges from this war as a partner in power or in control of its levers, then the United States will have waged a war against Iran only to end up empowering the most hardline wing of the Islamic Republic. At that point, the question will no longer be who won militarily and who lost, but rather: what kind of Iran has this war produced, and who will pay the price for the Iran emerging from beneath the rubble of strikes, deals, and understandings?

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The war waged by President Donald Trump with Israel against Iran since February has not only exposed the limits of military power; it has exposed the limits of American political decision-making. The flaw may lie in a president who began the war and then hesitated to carry it through. Or it may lie in the assessment of the American military and intelligence establishment, which concluded that completing the mission against Iran was not possible at the cost it had envisioned. Yet the outcome is what matters to the region now: did the war weaken the Islamic Republic, or did it reconstruct it in favor of the Revolutionary Guard?

That question lies at the heart of the next phase. If the role of the traditional religious establishment has receded to some extent, what has advanced to the forefront is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: the institution most attached to the doctrine of 1979, the least willing to engage in genuine negotiation, and the least inclined toward give-and-take. The Revolutionary Guard is not merely a military force; it is the ideological guardian of the export of the revolution – the transformation of Iranian influence into a project of regional domination over neighboring states, particularly the Gulf, and through proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and previously Syria.

In this doctrine, the Gulf is not merely a neighboring geographic space. It is the opposing model. The Arab Gulf states are no longer simply political rivals to Tehran; they have become an existential challenge to the idea of the Islamic Republic because they are building modern economic and developmental visions that contradict the radical theological model the Revolutionary Guard seeks to impose upon the region. Therefore, Iranian revenge against the Gulf is not a passing possibility but part of the logic of the regime should it emerge from the war either triumphant or wounded.

The shape of revenge is the question Washington must not underestimate, just as it previously underestimated the mindset of Tehran’s rulers. If the Revolutionary Guard believes it has won, it will punish all those who thought it was on the verge of collapse. If it believes it has lost, it will seek an asymmetrical form of retaliation – low-cost and long-term. In either case, direct retaliation against the United States is unlikely to be the first choice unless Washington resumes military operations and escalates toward an open confrontation. At that point, American bases and naval presence in the region become conceivable targets.

The easier option, however, is the Gulf. Missiles and drones do not require enormous cost to create massive disruption in economies, confidence, investment, and strategic vision. Sustained threats to navigation, infrastructure, or economic centers are enough to unsettle major projects built upon stability, openness, and global connectivity. Here lies the paradox: Gulf states may not be direct participants in the war, yet they may end up paying for it twice – once when targeted in response to the United States and Israel, and again when left facing an American-Iranian understanding that fails to account for their security and vision.

For this reason, the alliance between the United States and the Arab Gulf states appears to be facing an unprecedented test. The question is no longer whether Washington possesses the capacity to defend the Gulf, but whether it possesses the political will to do so when tempted by a deal with Tehran. If the war ends through a framework agreement, side understandings, or secret arrangements led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner with the Iranians, then the Gulf question becomes legitimate: is the United States still a strategic ally, or is it experimenting with replacing the old alliance through a new understanding with the Revolutionary Guard?

The matter does not stop at the Gulf. The Iranian people and opposition will read the outcome as betrayal if the war ends by empowering the Revolutionary Guard. They wagered that Donald Trump was serious about bringing radical change to Iran. If he accepts a transfer of authority within the regime from the clerical establishment to the Revolutionary Guard – as a form of “change,” then Washington will have granted the regime an opportunity for internal revenge. Executions, systematic killings, and the elimination of dissidents would then become a message to all who believed the Islamic Republic was on the verge of collapse.

Then comes the Strait of Hormuz as a decisive test. If any memorandum of understanding under discussion grants Iran direct or ambiguous influence over navigation – alone or through some arrangement with Washington – then the Trump administration will effectively have installed the Islamic Republic as a policeman over the Gulf’s oil and gas lifeline. This is a scenario whose consequences are difficult to overstate, because it concerns not only the Gulf but China as well, which will not take lightly any arrangement affecting energy security and maritime routes.

Even more troubling would be for the war to end through the systematic postponement of the very files that created Iran’s real power: uranium later, the nuclear program later, missiles and drones later, and regional behavior through proxies later. This would not be a strategic agreement but a purchase of time for Iran. If Trump accepts such a formula, he will not have surpassed the agreement reached by Barack Obama and later torn apart; he will have returned to something weaker. An agreement that postpones missiles, proxies, and regional conduct gives the Revolutionary Guard room to regroup while leaving Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and the Gulf trapped in the same cycle of pressure and coercion.

The domestic political cost to Trump will not be insignificant. He built part of his image on being the man who tears up bad agreements and replaces them with stronger deals. If he ends up with a less stringent agreement, or understandings that leave Iran’s main instruments of power untouched, he will shift from being the man of deals to the man of hesitation and indecision. The question in Washington, as in the region, will then be: did Trump wage war to change Iran, or to open the way for a new arrangement with its Revolutionary Guard?

What Iran after the war? The answer is not yet complete, but it has begun to take shape. Either Iran is compelled to revise its doctrine and instruments, or its Revolutionary Guard emerges more convinced that endurance alone is enough to secure victory, that time works in Tehran’s favor, and that Washington threatens loudly only to negotiate over what it should have resolved. At that point, the war will not have produced a safer Middle East, but rather a Middle East discovering that deals can sometimes prove more costly than wars.

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