اطلاعات سپاه

What it is

اطلاعات سپاه (etelâ’ât-e sepâh), formally the IRGC Intelligence Organization (sâzmân-e etelâ’ât-e sepâh, IRGC-IO). It exists as a distinct apparatus inside the Sepâh, separate from the civilian Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS). The IRGC has had an intelligence arm since 1979, but it was reorganized and elevated in 2009 (after the Green Movement) into a parallel service with national-level authority over political and security cases.

The mechanics

IRGC-IO reports up the IRGC chain to the Sepâh’s commander-in-chief, who reports to the Supreme Leader. It does not answer to the cabinet, the president, or the intelligence minister. It runs Ward 2-A inside Evin Prison (separate from MOIS’s Ward 209). It runs its own informant network, its own interrogators, its own cyber unit. It handles cases the regime considers existential: Mahsa-era journalists, dual nationals held for hostage diplomacy, military-related espionage, the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists (the investigations, not the killings). It is, in effect, the Supreme Leader’s personal counterintelligence service with a uniformed cover.

Sanctions and designations

The US Treasury sanctioned IRGC-IO and senior figures from 2011 onward under counter-terrorism and human-rights authorities. The EU has sanctioned IRGC-IO officials specifically for the post-2009 crackdown and for the 2022 Mahsa-protest detentions of journalists. The UK has sanctioned IRGC-IO commanders. The whole IRGC, including its intelligence arm, falls under the US FTO designation since April 2019 and the EU terrorist designation since 19 February 2026.

In our voice

IRGC-IO is the apparatus that arrested Niloofar Hâmedi (the Shargh journalist who broke the photo of Mahsa Jina Amini in the hospital) and Elâhe Mohammadi (the Hammihan journalist who covered the funeral in Saqqez). Both were taken in September 2022 by IRGC-IO, not by MOIS. Both were sentenced in 2023 by Revolutionary Courts to long prison terms for “collaboration with the United States.” Both are women in their thirties whose crime was photography. The distinction between MOIS and IRGC-IO matters because the IRGC arm is harder for diplomatic back-channels to reach. MOIS at least has a minister who has to pretend to be a cabinet member. The IRGC reports to a man who answers to no one. When Iranian dissidents say “they took me to 2-A, not 209,” they mean: the worse one took me.

Why it’s in this glossary

Because Western coverage routinely conflates “Iranian intelligence” into one block and misses the institutional split that shapes who gets out, who doesn’t, and who decides. Two services, two wards, two regimes-within-the-regime.

How to use it

• اطلاعات سپاه گرفتش (etelâ’ât-e sepâh gereftesh) “IRGC Intelligence took him/her”
• بند ۲-الف مربوط به سپاه است (band-e do-alef marbut be sepâh ast) “Ward 2-A belongs to the IRGC”
• اطلاعات یا اطلاعات سپاه؟ (etelâ’ât yâ etelâ’ât-e sepâh?) “MOIS or IRGC Intelligence?”, a question Iranian families ask after an arrest

References

• Dehkhoda: sepâh
• US Treasury, IRGC-IO designations
• FDD, The IRGC Intelligence Organization, May 2020
• CPJ, Hâmedi and Mohammadi sentencing, October 2023
• Radio Free Europe / Radio Farda, Hâmedi and Mohammadi case