DUBAI — A potential agreement between Washington and Tehran to wind down their conflict carries a sharp contradiction at its core: the economic incentives designed to bring Iran to the table may end up empowering a force that the United States and its Western allies have designated as a terrorist organization.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have spent years building a vast commercial empire under the cover of international sanctions, with business interests spanning oil production, construction, shipping, telecommunications, and port operations.
Now, as both governments prepare for negotiations that could unlock billions of dollars for Iran and throw open its economy to global investment, the elite military force stands to be among the biggest winners of any deal reached.
Four senior Iranian sources told Reuters that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is uniquely positioned to capture a significant share of whatever financial benefits flow from sanctions relief, expanded oil exports, and incoming foreign investment.
But that same deep entrenchment in Iran’s commercial landscape could become one of the most serious barriers to a final agreement. Because the Guards are so thoroughly woven into Iranian business, their terrorism designation may make it extremely difficult to fully free the country’s economy from sanctions restrictions.
The Guards were established by Iran’s late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and grew considerably more powerful under his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gaining political influence while leading efforts to extend Iran’s reach across the Middle East and crush internal opposition.
Since the war broke out on February 28 — triggered by strikes that killed Khamenei — the Guards have only tightened their grip on power within the country, playing a key role in installing Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the new supreme leader. The Guards have indicated they support the effort to reach a deal ending the conflict.
One senior source described the Guards as the true victors of the war, noting that having protected the survival of Iran’s Islamic system, they are better positioned than anyone to benefit from sanctions being lifted — particularly given their decades of experience running Iran’s sanctions-evasion operations.
A spokesperson for the Guards declined to offer any comment.
An interim agreement announced this week would allow waivers permitting sanctioned Iranian oil sales, while a more sweeping deal in the coming months could eliminate all remaining sanctions and give Iran access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund.
The Guards do not release financial information publicly, but a second senior source said that any economic recovery effort would naturally expand the organization’s already considerable financial reach — pointing to existing multibillion-dollar trade networks, oil activities, shipping operations, and construction enterprises.
The Guards’ engineering division, Khatam al-Anbia, oversees hundreds of affiliated companies involved in major infrastructure and energy projects, with additional involvement in telecommunications, automobile manufacturing, tourism, and logistics, according to official statements and public records.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Iranian investment law requires foreign companies to partner with local firms, and the sheer volume of companies linked to the Guards means the organization effectively controls access to Iran’s most profitable sectors for any outside investor.
That reality puts Western companies returning to the Iranian market in a difficult position — they could find themselves doing business alongside or through entities connected to the Guards even without any direct dealings, while still risking exposure to sanctions that specifically target the organization.
Jeremy Paner, a former Treasury Department sanctions investigator now serving as a partner at the law firm Hughes Hubbard and Reed, put it plainly: “The IRGC is the entity pulling all the strings behind the oil sector, so you can’t ignore all of the legal effects of doing business with them.”
Even with the interim deal authorizing Iranian oil exports, Paner warned that “there’s still legal exposure for U.S. companies because of the IRGC lurking in the background.” He noted that the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed in 2016, allows victims of terrorist attacks to pursue legal action against U.S. companies that assist groups accused of terrorism, including the Guards.
If broader negotiations fail and sanctions remain largely in place, the Guards would still benefit from the interim oil export waivers and retain their firm hold on the economy through their long-established expertise in evading sanctions, the senior Iranian sources said.
The Guards’ economic expansion was actually accelerated by the sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear program starting in the early 2000s, as the organization built networks to move oil, manage shipping, and conduct trade through middlemen and shell companies.
That model became increasingly difficult to sustain after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 nuclear agreement between major world powers in 2018 and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign — measures he has since expanded further during his current term in office.
A third senior Iranian source said those steps narrowed the space available for sanctions evasion and drove up the cost of maintaining illicit financial networks.
