Intelligence Sources: IRGC Could Seize Control if Iran Enters Critical Crisis

The Islamic Republic’s legitimacy is quickly eroding, and security assessments indicate that a military takeover is more likely than a democratic transition

Intelligence services are notoriously poor at predicting revolutions. Whether violent uprisings or “velvet revolutions”, major societal shifts - especially inside adversary states - tend to arrive as strategic surprises. This was true of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, just as it had been a decade earlier with the Iranian Revolution. In that case, the U.S. intelligence community famously assessed the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi as fundamentally stable almost until the revolution was already underway.

This is why we should be extremely cautious about the constant game of predictions surrounding the events unfolding in Iran during the first days of the 2026 uprising.

With that caveat in place, here is a fact.

In meetings with Israeli security officials about a month ago, I was told quite plainly that the Islamic Republic is exhibiting the worst indicators of regime instability ever recorded. According to internal Israeli intelligence assessments used to measure regime stability, Iran was at its most critical and vulnerable point. To their credit, this assessment was made before a single demonstration had been reported.

Developments inside Iran are moving quickly, and many unforeseen and decisive variables will shape the outcome: loyalty within the armed forces; deliberations inside the Iranian leadership; economic crisis deepening; the regime’s capacity and willingness to suppress protests by force; and crucially, the actual scale of the protest movement.

Here is how Western intelligence sources are currently evaluating the situation: If the regime begins to lose genuine control across the country - a development intelligence assessments do not see at present - a military coup of sorts, led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), ׂ is considered very plausible. It is viewed as far more likely than alternative scenarios, such as a democratic “velvet revolution” of the kind seen in Eastern Europe. In other words, watch the generals.