Selon l’analyse de l’iranologue Karim Sadjadpour (publiée par le Council on Foreign Relations), les Gardiens de la Révolution ne forment pas une entité homogène : "we shouldn’t view the clergy or the Revolutionary Guards as monolithic entities. It’s true that the senior commanders in the Revolutionary Guard were handpicked by Khamenei, and they’re going to remain unfailingly loyal to him. But the Revolutionary Guards are a huge group—over 120,000 men. Many among the rank and file were widely thought to have supported Mohammad Khatami’s presidency. If the Revolutionary Guards are ordered to massively clamp down on the Iranian people—men, women, children—I’m not sure that they’ll remain intact. (...) There are real fissures among them. Mohsen Rezaei [one of the opposition candidates] was the longest-serving senior commander of the Revolutionary Guard and has voiced opposition to Ahmadinejad’s election. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, former senior Revolutionary Guard commander and current mayor of Tehran, is one of Ahmadinejad’s archrivals. So we shouldn’t see the Revolutionary Guards as simply 120,000 crazed Khamenei devotees willing to martyr themselves to retain Ahmadinejad’s presidency".
