The General Who Promised Revenge: Mohammad Pakpour and the Machinery of Repression

Summary

In April 2022, Mohammad Pakpour, then commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Ground Forces, delivered a statement intended to project the scale of the Islamic Republic's determination to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani. Even if every American leader were killed, Pakpour said, Soleimani's blood would still not be avenged. The message was characteristic of a military culture in which deterrence was communicated through absolutist threats, and in which senior commanders presented confrontation with the United States and Israel as both inevitable and manageable.

Less than four years later, Pakpour himself was dead.

He had survived decades of war, counterinsurgency, border operations and domestic unrest. He had spent roughly 16 years at the head of the IRGC Ground Forces before being elevated in June 2025 to command the entire organization after an Israeli strike killed his predecessor, Hossein Salami. His promotion placed a veteran of ground warfare and internal security at the center of the Islamic Republic's military establishment during the most dangerous period it had faced in decades.

Pakpour lasted only months in the post. On February 28, 2026, he was killed during the opening phase of joint US-Israeli attacks that also eliminated other senior military and political figures. His successor, Ahmad Vahidi, inherited an organization that had now lost successive commanders to targeted strikes within less than a year.

The significance of Pakpour's career, however, extends beyond the manner of his death.

For years he occupied the intersection between two functions that became increasingly inseparable inside the Islamic Republic: defending the state against external enemies and defending the political order against its own population. The Ground Forces under his command were not simply conventional military units stationed along borders. They were connected to provincial commands, specialized formations and security structures that could be deployed against protests, insurgencies and perceived internal threats.

European sanctions authorities eventually named Pakpour personally in connection with serious human rights violations, stating that forces under his command had used lethal force against unarmed demonstrators during the November 2019 protests. The European Union concluded that, as Ground Forces commander, he bore responsibility for those abuses.

His record therefore offers a window into something larger than the biography of one general. It shows how the Islamic Republic built an internal security architecture in which military command, political loyalty, ideological messaging and public-order operations overlapped. It also illustrates the widening gap between the image projected by that system and its actual vulnerability.

Pakpour's public persona was designed around readiness. Photographs and videos repeatedly showed him in operational environments: beside aircraft, carrying weapons, inspecting damaged regions, entering command rooms and visiting underground military facilities. He cultivated the appearance of a commander who remained close to the field.

Yet some of the most revealing images associated with him suggested something else. During the search for President Ebrahim Raisi's crashed helicopter in May 2024, Pakpour appeared with senior commanders examining maps and discussing possible locations as an operation involving multiple branches of the state struggled to locate the aircraft. Raisi was eventually confirmed dead after his helicopter crashed on May 19.

By the end of Pakpour's life, the contradictions had become difficult to conceal. A commander whose institution had spent years promising devastating retaliation was killed in the opening stages of another war. An organization that presented itself as deeply penetrative and intelligence-driven repeatedly lost senior figures to precision attacks. And a force that claimed extraordinary capacity against foreign adversaries had often demonstrated its greatest coercive effectiveness not abroad, but against demonstrators inside Iran.

From War Veteran to Security Power Broker

Pakpour belonged to the generation of officers whose authority was built during the Islamic Republic's formative conflicts.

Born in Arak in 1961, he entered the Revolutionary Guard during the period of revolutionary turmoil and early internal conflict that followed 1979. His career took shape amid confrontations in Kurdistan and then the Iran-Iraq War, where the newly created Guard evolved from an ideological militia into a large military organization.

During and after the war, Pakpour moved through armored, divisional and operational commands. His later assignments included command positions associated with the IRGC's regional formations and operational headquarters. This gave him experience across both conventional warfare and the decentralized security structure that became central to the Guard's domestic role.

His rise to the leadership of the Ground Forces placed him in one of the most consequential posts in the organization. European sanctions records identify him as Ground Forces commander from around March 2010, following his appointment during the period surrounding the disputed 2009 presidential election and the Green Movement.

The importance of the Ground Forces is easily underestimated by observers who focus on the Quds Force's foreign operations or the Aerospace Force's missiles and drones. Inside Iran, however, the Ground Forces sit at the heart of a territorial structure that links national command to regional headquarters and provincial IRGC organizations.

That system provides the leadership with more than conventional military capability. It creates a nationwide network capable of responding to unrest without relying exclusively on ordinary police.

Pakpour also oversaw elite and specialized units, including formations associated with the Saberin forces, which were designed for difficult counterinsurgency, special operations and rapid deployment missions. His tenure was marked by repeated operations in Iran's western and southeastern border regions, where the Islamic Republic confronted Kurdish armed groups, Baluch insurgents and cross-border security threats.

The distinction between border warfare and internal control was often thin.

In Kurdish and Baluch areas, military operations took place against a background of deep poverty, ethnic discrimination and chronic economic marginalization. Among the civilians caught in this security environment were kolbars, laborers who carry goods through mountainous border routes, and fuel carriers in Sistan and Baluchistan.

Rights organizations have repeatedly documented fatal shootings of people involved in such informal cross-border work. The justification offered by authorities has often been border security, anti-smuggling enforcement or counterinsurgency. Critics argue that the result has been a system in which poor civilians working in dangerous informal economies can be treated as security targets rather than as citizens shaped by structural deprivation.

Pakpour's political importance also grew because he did not behave as a military commander detached from ideological disputes.

The IRGC has always rejected the idea that it should resemble a politically neutral professional military. Pakpour was particularly explicit about that principle. During periods of confrontation between President Hassan Rouhani's government and the Guard, he defended the IRGC's political role and the doctrine that the organization remained committed to the direction set by the supreme leader.

The conflict became especially visible when Rouhani criticized the Guard's role in the economy and politics. Rouhani famously described a powerful institution combining weapons, media and economic resources as something far removed from genuine privatization. Senior IRGC commanders responded that military power was indispensable to national sovereignty.

Pakpour's position went further than institutional self-defense. His argument was essentially that the Guard could not be neutral toward individuals or factions that departed from the supreme leader's political line.

That formulation captures an important feature of the Islamic Republic's security model. The IRGC is not merely a military defending territorial boundaries. It is constitutionally and institutionally designed to defend a political system.

Pakpour's career flourished precisely because those two missions increasingly converged.

The Architecture of Domestic Repression

The most consequential part of Pakpour's record was not his battlefield rhetoric but his place in successive internal crackdowns.

The nationwide protests of November 2019 followed the sudden announcement of a sharp increase in fuel prices. Demonstrations spread rapidly across more than 100 cities. Iranian authorities imposed a near-total internet shutdown as security forces opened fire in several locations.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented widespread use of lethal force. Amnesty initially reported at least 106 protesters killed across 21 cities, later raising its national assessment. Human Rights Watch described direct shootings, mass arrests and a deliberate effort to obstruct scrutiny.

The Islamic Republic's response in Mahshahr, in Khuzestan province, became one of the defining episodes.

Residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch said security forces identified as IRGC units moved against protesters who had blocked roads around Chamran and Bandar-e Mahshahr. Witnesses described armored vehicles, live ammunition and DShK heavy machine guns. Some protesters fled into nearby marshland.

One resident told Human Rights Watch that at least 20 people were killed around the marsh, while Amnesty's early verified national tally attributed 14 deaths to Bandar-e Mahshahr and its suburbs. Opposition accounts later circulated substantially higher figures. Because the authorities restricted information and families were reportedly pressured, a definitive local death toll remains difficult to establish. What is far better documented is the method: military-grade firepower was used in an operation against unrest in a civilian area.

Pakpour's responsibility was institutional rather than dependent on proof that he personally ordered every individual shooting.

The European Union's sanctions finding was unusually direct. It stated that the IRGC Ground Forces had used lethal force against unarmed protesters and other civilians during the November 2019 demonstrations, and concluded that Pakpour, as commander, bore responsibility for serious human rights violations.

That conclusion matters because it moves the analysis beyond the conduct of unidentified gunmen. The crackdown was not simply a collection of isolated abuses committed by undisciplined personnel. The Ground Forces operated through a hierarchy, and the international sanctions framework treated command responsibility as relevant.

The pattern continued during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.

After the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, demonstrations spread throughout Iran. Leaked official documents obtained by Amnesty International indicated that the country's highest military authorities instructed provincial commanders to confront protesters severely. Amnesty documented the deployment of the IRGC, Basij, police, riot units and plainclothes forces, as well as extensive use of firearms.

One of the most disturbing characteristics of the crackdown was the number of protesters who suffered catastrophic eye injuries.

Rights groups and doctors documented repeated shootings involving metal pellets and birdshot. Amnesty recorded cases in which protesters lost vision in one or both eyes, and evidence indicated that security forces repeatedly fired projectiles toward people's heads and upper bodies.

Claims that particular IRGC formations or individual snipers systematically received orders to blind demonstrators are more difficult to establish at command level. The underlying phenomenon, however, is not seriously in doubt: large numbers of people suffered eye injuries during security operations, and international organizations documented repeated unlawful use of weapons capable of causing precisely those wounds.

Sistan and Baluchistan became another major theater of confrontation.

Pakpour publicly adopted the language of security and red lines while unrest in predominantly Baluch areas posed a particular challenge to the state. The region combined political anger with longstanding grievances over discrimination, poverty and coercive security policies.

His physical presence in areas of unrest reflected the broader philosophy of his command. Internal disturbances were not treated as a matter solely for civilian policing. They could be framed as threats to national security and answered through structures ultimately connected to the IRGC.

By January 2026, this architecture was tested on a scale even greater than in 2019 or 2022.

Protests that began on December 28, 2025, amid a severe economic and currency crisis escalated into nationwide anti-government demonstrations. On January 8 and 9, security forces carried out what Amnesty International later described as massacres, with the IRGC, Basij, police and plainclothes forces all implicated in the crackdown.

The precise death toll remains fiercely contested.

The Islamic Republic's Supreme National Security Council later acknowledged 3,117 deaths. A United Nations special rapporteur said information from medical sources suggested at least 5,000 deaths and potentially as many as 20,000. Other reporting produced still higher estimates, including figures above 30,000. Amnesty concluded that thousands were killed but stressed that an internet shutdown, intimidation of families and restrictions on independent investigation made definitive counting extremely difficult.

Claims placing the total near 50,000 therefore should not be treated as established fact. They exist within a wider field of competing estimates produced during a blackout and an extraordinary period of repression. What can be stated with far greater confidence is that January 2026 became one of the deadliest episodes of domestic state violence in the Islamic Republic's history.

Pakpour was by then no longer merely commander of one branch. He was commander-in-chief of the IRGC.

That placed him at the summit of an organization whose provincial, Basij and Ground Forces structures were deeply involved in internal security operations. It also linked the final months of his career to the central question that had followed him since 2019: when military institutions are repeatedly deployed against domestic unrest, where does responsibility end?

Propaganda, Politics, and the Myth of Readiness

Pakpour's public image was carefully suited to the political needs of the institution he served.

He was frequently shown close to operational environments. Unlike commanders presented mainly behind podiums or conference tables, Pakpour cultivated the visual language of field command: military equipment, weapons, helicopters, forward areas, crisis zones and operational briefings.

This imagery carried a political message. The Guard's legitimacy has long depended partly on a contrast between itself and the civilian bureaucracy. State propaganda depicts the IRGC commander as decisive, sacrificial and physically present, while civilian administrators are often portrayed as hesitant, technocratic or remote.

That narrative surfaced dramatically during the devastating floods of 2019.

Pakpour was recorded criticizing civilian officials and describing widespread public anger in affected areas. His comments suggested that government representatives feared entering some flooded communities while residents still differentiated positively between the Guard and civilian authorities.

The episode was politically useful for an institution already engaged in a struggle with Rouhani's administration over economic and political power. Yet subsequent confrontations between angry residents and security personnel complicated the image of effortless popular affection.

This was a recurring feature of Pakpour's career. The IRGC's media system transformed physical presence into evidence of competence, even when the surrounding event raised questions about institutional performance.

The search for Ebrahim Raisi's helicopter was one example. The images of Pakpour and other commanders gathered around maps were intended to show senior leadership personally managing a national emergency. Instead, for critics, they became evidence of confusion as Iranian institutions struggled to determine the aircraft's location. Raisi and the other occupants were eventually found dead.

The same tension was visible after Pakpour became IRGC commander in June 2025.

His elevation came only hours after Israel killed Hossein Salami and a group of senior military leaders in coordinated attacks. Khamenei promoted Pakpour to major general and put him in command of the Guard on June 13.

The selection was significant.

Ali Fadavi, the Guard's deputy commander, might have appeared the obvious successor. Instead, the leadership chose a man whose experience lay primarily in ground warfare, provincial command, counterinsurgency and internal security.

One plausible explanation was operational necessity. In a crisis involving the risk of foreign attack, infiltration and domestic unrest, Pakpour's background was unusually relevant. A commander accustomed to territorial control and ground formations could potentially oversee both defense against external penetration and the suppression of instability at home.

His first months in office reinforced the image of a commander preparing the country for prolonged confrontation.

Pakpour spoke of mobilizing volunteers, maintaining readiness and organizing people who approached Basij centers even if they had not previously been formal members. The concept resembled a familiar model within the Islamic Republic: in a national emergency, ideological mobilization could compensate for institutional weakness.

The rhetoric became increasingly aggressive.

By early 2026, Pakpour publicly warned Washington and Israel that the Guard had its "finger on the trigger." The message was issued amid growing US military pressure and after the January crackdown.

State-linked media similarly emphasized underground facilities, missile capacity and hardened bases. Pakpour was filmed inspecting military infrastructure in imagery designed to communicate survivability. In one widely circulated presentation, he appeared moving through an underground complex by motorcycle, a visual distillation of the mythology surrounding him: mobile, fearless, physically involved and prepared for war.

There were also attempts to internationalize his threatening persona. A Hebrew-language version of one message was circulated as evidence of direct psychological warfare against Israel. Critics later described the voice as artificial dubbing rather than evidence that Pakpour spoke Hebrew. Whatever the technical production process, the episode illustrated a broader trend: the commander's media identity had become as carefully engineered as the military message itself.

That distinction matters because deterrence is partly theatrical. A military does not merely need weapons. It needs adversaries and domestic audiences to believe that its command structure will survive the opening blow and respond coherently.

This is where the Islamic Republic's propaganda collided with an increasingly damaging reality.

The June 2025 conflict demonstrated that Israeli intelligence had been able to identify and kill multiple senior commanders at the outset of hostilities. Pakpour himself owed his final promotion to that decapitation strike.

Eight months later, the same vulnerability reached him.

Death, Impunity, and the System He Left Behind

On February 28, 2026, another large-scale US-Israeli assault began against the Islamic Republic.

Pakpour was among the senior figures killed in the opening phase. Reuters later listed him alongside other major political and military officials eliminated during the strikes. His death was confirmed after initial confusion over the scale of the attacks.

The symbolism was difficult to miss.

Only months earlier, Pakpour had been elevated because his predecessor had been killed in an Israeli attack. He had then spent his short tenure insisting that the Guard had recovered, that replacements were in place, that its personnel remained prepared and that future aggression would receive a more severe response.

His death demonstrated the limits of that claim.

It also exposed a paradox at the center of the Islamic Republic's security system. The IRGC had developed extraordinary capacity for surviving political crises inside Iran. Its provincial commands, Basij networks, intelligence bodies and military formations gave it an ability to disperse force throughout the country and repeatedly regain control of streets after mass demonstrations.

Against a technologically sophisticated foreign adversary with access to intelligence about senior commanders, however, centralization created its own vulnerabilities.

The Islamic Republic could replace commanders rapidly. It was less successful at preventing them from being located.

Reuters reported after the 2026 strikes that the Guard's decentralization had enabled military operations to continue even after severe leadership losses. The same system that created overlapping chains of command for regime survival could therefore absorb decapitation better than an ordinary centralized army.

But resilience is not the same as deterrence.

Successive killings of senior commanders showed that an organization could remain operational while still suffering profound intelligence and command failures.

Pakpour's successor illustrated another contradiction.

Ahmad Vahidi, himself a veteran security figure, took command after Pakpour's death and soon became an important power center in both wartime policy and negotiations involving the United States.

The transition from Pakpour's language of irreversible confrontation to a political order in which senior Guard figures participated in decisions over negotiation did not mean the institution had abandoned its ideology. It demonstrated something more pragmatic. The Islamic Republic had always combined revolutionary rhetoric with tactical accommodation when circumstances demanded it.

Pakpour's career can therefore be read as part of a broader institutional cycle.

First came the cultivation of military mythology: commanders shaped by the Iran-Iraq War were presented as uniquely capable guardians of the state.

Then came the expansion of their domestic authority. Provincial military commands, paramilitary structures and specialized forces became central instruments for controlling protest and politically sensitive regions.

Next came impunity. Major episodes of lethal violence, from November 2019 through the 2022 uprising and the January 2026 crackdown, produced extensive evidence of unlawful killings but little meaningful domestic accountability. International sanctions targeted figures such as Pakpour, but inside the system such accusations did not prevent promotion. In Pakpour's case, they preceded his elevation to the highest position in the Guard.

Finally came the contradiction between internal strength and external exposure.

Pakpour spent years helping build a security machine whose most demonstrable capacity was control over Iranian territory and Iranian citizens. He rose precisely because he had experience operating that machine.

Yet the institution's success in suppressing domestic challenges did not translate into protection of its own leadership.

That may be the most important conclusion to draw from his career.

The history of authoritarian security institutions is often written through their victories: the demonstrations dispersed, the opposition fragmented, the streets retaken and the chain of command preserved. But such victories can conceal deeper weaknesses. A system designed around loyalty may discourage scrutiny. A political culture that rewards declarations of strength may punish acknowledgment of vulnerability. An organization that treats criticism as hostility can become skilled at controlling information without becoming equally skilled at correcting failure.

Pakpour embodied that structure.

His supporters could point to four decades of military service, repeated deployments and command experience. His critics could point to a record inseparable from some of the bloodiest episodes of domestic repression in modern Iranian history. International authorities formally held him responsible for grave abuses associated with forces under his command.

Both realities are relevant to understanding why he became so powerful.

Within the Islamic Republic, participation in coercive security policy was not an obstacle to advancement. It was often evidence of reliability.

Pakpour's path from battlefield officer to Ground Forces commander and finally IRGC commander-in-chief therefore tells a larger story about political power. The institutions responsible for protecting the ruling order became increasingly central to governing it. The boundaries separating military defense, political intervention and domestic policing eroded.

By the time Pakpour reached the summit, the Guard was no longer merely one institution among others. It was a military organization, a political actor, an internal security apparatus and a pillar of succession and crisis management.

His death did not dismantle that structure. Vahidi's rapid appointment demonstrated its ability to regenerate leadership. The Guard remained capable of fighting, repressing and influencing political decisions after losing another commander.

But Pakpour's fate damaged one of the ideas on which its authority had depended: that relentless threats, hardened facilities and public displays of military readiness could themselves guarantee security.

They could not.

The same commander who once suggested that even the deaths of all American leaders would be insufficient vengeance for Qasem Soleimani ultimately became another name in the expanding list of senior figures killed in the confrontation he had spent years describing as a field of inevitable victory.

His legacy is therefore not simply the story of a general killed in war. It is the record of a system that developed formidable tools for coercion at home while repeatedly discovering the limits of its power abroad, a system in which accountability for violence was weak, promotion rewarded loyalty and the performance of strength could survive long after the underlying assumptions of security had begun to fail.