This book is essential reading for students of Iranian politics and history and paramilitary organizations. Alfoneh (senior fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies) contends that the Pasdaran, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has suppressed ideological heresy alongside its security operations, expanded its power and influence in the country. As a state within a state, he argues, the IRGC could hold the clerics hostage. The book explains the IRGC's origins and outlines its destruction of governmental oversight, its enhanced economic power, and ways it foiled political foes. Alfoneh covers some of the same ground as Emanuele Ottolenghi, Steven O'Hern, and the Rand Corporation's 2008 IRGC study. The book concentrates on the pre-2010 period, not on IRCG's international activities or specifics of the IRCG's subcontracting businesses. The hyped 'military dictatorship' of the title is more of a diffuse subcontracting process. Nonetheless, Alfoneh exposes the IRGC's networks and methods. The IRGC retained its importance under then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As President Hassan Rouhani called in August 2013 for reductions to the IRGC's size, and IRGC cabinet members have decreased, it is not yet clear if the trends and patterns Alfoneh explores are permanent political features or transient. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels.
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