The IRGC proved its worth during the eight-year war with Iraq. This began in 1980 when Iraq sought to grab some Iranian oil fields on the border while the Iranian civil war was still underway. The IRGC quickly ended the Iranian Civil War and turned their attention to the Iraqi invaders. The war continued until 1988, when both sides realized that over half a million Iranians and Iraqis had been killed and no one was winning.
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was able to avoid defeat because Arab oil states sent Iraq billions of dollars in economic and military aid. Neighboring Kuwait provided over $10 billion in loans and, after the war, unwisely asked for a plan to repay the debt. Iraq had oil income and could afford to repay the debt, but instead invaded Kuwait in 1990, instigating a war with Saudi Arabia, the United States, and other NATO nations. The war was over in about a hundred days, with Iraq defeated. Then 9/11 happened, and the US conquered Iraq because it had trained terrorists on how to hijack airliners.
Western forces occupied Iraq until 2011 so they could deal with Saddam’s backup plan that consisted of using Islamic Terrorists against the Western invaders. This ultimately failed, and Saddam was killed along the way.
Iran observed all this mayhem and eventually sought to take advantage of Iraqi chaos and weakness. During the 1980s, Iran spent nearly $20 billion to establish and maintain a presence in Syria and Lebanon. The IRGC Quds Force handled most of the subversion and organized pro-Iran militias in Syria. That process was still going on in early 2024. In the last few months of 2024, it all ended, along with billions of dollars’ worth of weapons factories and air defense systems. Now it's all gone, and Iran has nothing to show for it.
That ended 15-20 years of Iranian efforts to make Syria a base for Iranian attacks on Israel. This is one of many catastrophic strategic defeats for Iran’s mullah regime in the last year. The most recent is that corruption and mismanagement of its economy have produced a shortage of water, oil, and natural gas for domestic use. Iran’s president made a televised speech in December 2024 informing the Iranian people of this and announced his decision to divert the currently available fuel stocks from the economy and jobs to heat homes, so millions of Iranians wouldn’t freeze to death in the dark. This and ongoing economic screw-ups due to unending and rising corruption and inflation produced another popular uprising in January 2026, which was suppressed with 30,000 – 60,000 dead.
Something else Iran must rebuild is belief among all Iranians that the current leaders will be able to end the poverty that has been growing over the last decade, with a third of Iranians impoverished and a few percent without housing or enough food to survive. All evidence shows that this is an impossible burden given the mullah regime’s corruption and brutality.
Many Iranian leaders believe a successful uprising is possible if the religious dictatorship does nothing or tries to suppress the continuing protests, poverty, and violent suppression of protests. That kind of suppression is increasingly less effective, and members of the religious establishment and some IRGC leaders openly express concern that a more serious uprising is possible and whoever wins, Iran loses. So far, most of the senior clerics in the Guardians Council oppose any concessions to those demanding economic reforms and an end of lifestyle rules that punish women who do not cover their hair with a scarf.
IRGC leaders are less eager to oppose any concessions. Many IRGC leaders are closer to the protests and have a better sense of how angry Iranians are and how far most Iranians are willing to go. The IRGC is not large enough to take on most Iranians, and many individual IRGC men are not willing to slaughter a lot of fellow Iranians to keep corrupt religious and IRGC leaders in power. The continued economic sanctions make life difficult for more Iranians who are unemployed and cannot afford the higher food prices. Iranian leaders must decide whether they want to still live in a fantasy world of rapidly rebuilding and repairing all the damage the country has suffered lately. God will provide, but not in the form of infrastructure restoration or restocking the military rocket and missile arsenal.
The war in Ukraine has been going on for over a thousand years. Russia invaded Ukraine five years ago and has failed to conquer its neighbor. Ukrainian long-range drones are systematically destroying Russian economic and military infrastructure. Russia would like to end this war, which has cost it over a trillion dollars and over a million Russians dead or fleeing to other countries. What really rankles Russia is that Ukraine is the source of the original Russian culture.
Ukraine, as defined by a common language and cultural customs, first appeared about 1,500 years ago. This coincided with the emergence of Russia. Russia managed to expand more rapidly than Ukraine, and there are now six times more Russian speakers. Forcing others to adopt your language is a common tool for linguistic expansion. Ukrainians had much less ambition for imperial expansion. This means that the continued existence of the Ukrainian language and nationalism is something of an achievement, one that Russia is still seeking to suppress.
What is now known as Ukraine evolved from the unification of a number of Slavic tribes speaking a common language (Ukrainian) and united around 900 AD when Swedish Vikings traded and raided into what is now Russia via major rivers like the Neva and Vistula, both of which allowed Viking longboats to travel deep into Russia. These early Nordic raiders were known as the Rus (Old Norse for “rowers”), who eventually became Russia. This began in the 800s when the Rus captured Kyiv and used it as the center of a Rus kingdom that came to include Kyiv, portions of modern Belarus and Russia. This was the first Russian state, and by the 1200s the Swedish influence had declined and been replaced by Ukrainian customs. Locals kept some Nordic words and customs for centuries after that. The Kyivan Rus empire was made up of many distinct Slavic tribes that all recognized the city of Kyiv (to northern Slavs) or Kyiv (to the southeastern and southern Slavs) as the cultural and commercial capital of an empire that lasted about three centuries.
Russians and Ukrainians differ on the importance of the Kyivan Rus empire, with Russia seeing it as the cultural source of Russian/Ukrainian culture, which Russia came to dominate. Ukrainian see the Kyivan Rus empire as the origin of modern Ukraine, while Russia evolved differently after the devastating Golden Horde (Mongol) invasion in the early 1200s shattered the unity provided by the Kyivan Rus and was replaced by separate efforts to reunify as Russia and Ukraine. In the north, Eastern Orthodox Christianity helped a more successful effort, while Ukraine also had many Roman Catholics.
Russians concentrated on achieving access to the sea, in this case the Baltic Sea. The Ukrainians had to fight various groups of Mongols, Turks, and even Italian colonies to gain access to the Black Sea. Local Russian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian princes slowly diminished Mongol power by ruling small principalities that sometimes fought as Mongol allies. By 1400, Mongol power was in decline, and Ukraine and Belarus were a major component of the Polish Lithuanian confederation, which defeated the Golden Horde as well as Germans advancing from the west. Although powerful, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was surrounded by enemies and faced frequent internal conflicts.
Ukrainian history also honors the Ukrainian Cossacks, a frontier mounted militia that first appeared in the 1500s to protect southern borders from Turkic Kazaks and Tatars. The term Cossack comes from an ancient Slavic word, kozak, meaning a free man or adventurer. The need for kozaks arose when Ukraine claimed lands in the south and southeast of what is now Ukraine, but small numbers of mounted Tatars and Kazars largely controlled these lands. In return for official recognition and support (of individual land claims), bands of Cossacks emerged. Initially, anyone could join, including Turks, if they swore allegiance to Ukraine and the elected leader (hetman) of each Cossack group (“host”). Sometimes the Polish nobles tried to renege on their promise of land title, and that led to the Cossack reputation for often being rebels, and effective ones on their own land. This led to a Ukrainian hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, leading a rebellion against oppressive Polish nobles that led to brief (1649-1657) independence from Polish control.
Polish and Lithuanian power declined in the 1700s because of wars with a unified Russian kingdom (tsardom), persistent German attacks from the west, and growing Turkish power in the south. Emerging in the early 1300s, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1452, ending the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire and giving the Ottomans control over access to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. That control lasted until 1922, when an international treaty limited Turkish control over access to the Black Sea. In Russia, access to the sea (the Baltic Sea) was achieved in 1709.
In the last century, armed Ukrainians and Russian soldiers have frequently fought each other. Armed Ukrainian freedom fighters always existed, and their numbers swelled after the two World Wars. After 1945, the Ukrainian rebels were active for over a decade. Russian leaders sometimes considered the elimination of the Ukrainian people by mass murder or transportation to distant regions. This was not practical because Ukraine was also the center of technological and scientific innovation and, eventually, home to most of the Soviet aircraft industry. By the late 20th century, Ukraine was also Russia's Silicon Valley. It was no accident that Ukraine invented modern drone warfare, which was a major reason Russia has not been able to conquer Ukraine. Russia insists the war in Ukraine is ending with a Russian victory. The only problem with that is coming up with a convincing way to prove it. Vladimir Putin is flailing to make that work.