By Andre Pienaar
UANI report reveals IRGC command and control structure behind Iran’s deadly crackdown on protesters
As protests continue to engulf Iran and the European Union (EU) moves to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, a new report from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) has exposed the shadowy command centre coordinating the regime’s brutal crackdown on its own citizens.
The report, titled The Tharallah Headquarters unveiled: the hidden infrastructure blocking regime change in Iran, is authored by UANI Senior Advisor Saeid Golkar and Kasra Aarabi.
Drawing on leaked internal IRGC documents obtained from inside Iran, the report provides what UANI calls “the first comprehensive assessment” of the Islamic Republic’s primary internal security apparatus. The organisation says the intelligence is intended to equip Iranian protesters with critical knowledge of the regime’s repressive architecture.
The nerve centre of repression
At the heart of the report is the Tharallah Headquarters, a secretive IRGC unit responsible for security operations throughout Tehran and its vicinity. According to UANI’s analysis, Tharallah functions as the regime’s “operational brain during moments of unrest”, coordinating intelligence services, police forces, Basij militia, regular IRGC units and psychological operations.
“It ensures that repression is not improvised but calibrated,” Golkar and Aarabi write, describing an apparatus that has been systematically refined since the 2009 Green Movement, the largest challenge to clerical rule since the Islamic Revolution.
The Tharallah Headquarters oversees three provincial guards for Tehran and Alborz province. Among these, the report identifies the Mohammad Rasulullah Corps as Tehran’s primary IRGC force, operating from a main staff base on Niayesh Highway in northern Tehran.
A layered network of control
The leaked documents reveal an extensive hierarchical structure designed to blanket the capital with overlapping security coverage:
- 23 IRGC-Basij regional bases positioned across Tehran’s 22 municipality regions
- 300 Basij district bases spread throughout Tehran’s 123 municipality districts
- Approximately 3,000 neighbourhood bases providing ground-level monitoring and response capability
This architecture ensures that regime forces can rapidly deploy at street level while maintaining centralised command and control. The report identifies the locations of regional bases that have been “at the forefront of the brutal massacre on the Iranian streets”.
Security brigades and strike forces
The UANI report details the organisational structure of key enforcement units. The Aaleh-e Mohammad Security Brigade and the Al-Zahra Security Brigade each comprise five IRGC battalions of full-time special security forces bearing distinct insignia. These professional units command several Basij Imam Ali security units, each with 70 to 150 recruits.
Particularly notable are the regime’s mobile enforcement teams. According to the leaked documents, each security unit deploys three teams of ten motorbikes manned by two personnel, yielding 60 motorbike riders per unit. These “swarms” of motorcycle-mounted enforcers have become a defining feature of the regime’s response to demonstrations, rapidly converging on protest locations to disperse crowds and pursue fleeing civilians.
Calibrated escalation: the threat level system
The report reveals how Tehran manages civil unrest through a national security framework built around four operational threat levels:
- White (normal): baseline security posture
- Yellow (abnormal): triggers mobilisation of Basij Imam Ali shock units and motorcycle deployment
- Orange (extraordinary): expanded security mobilisation
- Red (critical): full crisis response
This system allows regime commanders to calibrate the intensity of repression while maintaining plausible deniability about the scale of operations.
A regime under pressure
The report arrives at a moment of acute vulnerability for the Islamic Republic. The IRGC is now led by General Mohammad Pakpour, appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after his predecessor Hossein Salami was among several senior military figures killed in an Israeli strike during the Twelve Day War in June 2025. These losses revealed the depth of Israeli intelligence penetration within the IRGC’s highest ranks.
President Trump has issued warnings of US intervention should the regime continue killing protesters. The European Union voted on Thursday to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, joining similar classifications by the United States, Canada and Australia.
Amnesty International reported this week that evidence shows the IRGC and Basij have been directly “involved in the deadly crackdown” that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, according to verified reports.
Vital intelligence for freedom
UANI has framed the report as an operational resource for Iranian civil society. By exposing the regime’s command structure, base locations, unit compositions and deployment protocols, the organisation aims to provide protesters with the intelligence necessary to anticipate and potentially evade regime forces.
“UANI’s report reveals the ecosystem of the most critical and life-preserving organ in the regime’s security and suppressive apparatus,” the organisation said in its press release announcing the findings.
Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, UANI’s chief executive officer, and Governor Jeb Bush, the organisation’s chairman, have positioned the report as part of UANI’s broader campaign to support the Iranian people while pressuring international actors to hold the regime accountable.
