Iran is being swallowed by a terrorist paramilitary organization.

These zealots are propping up Iran’s supreme leader—some observers say their power now surpasses his. They have gained ridiculous control over Iran’s economy, and indications are that sanctions are actually increasing their authority. They are extremely well funded. They have the blessing of the president, who is one of their own.

And they oversee Iran’s nuclear program.

If you thought Iran was dangerous as a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy, just wait.

The Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution was founded in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini himself, with the constitutionally prescribed mandate to serve as “guardian of the revolution and of its achievements.”

Today this army has 125,000 military personnel, including ground, air and naval forces. It also controls the paramilitary Basij militia, a volunteer-based force of 90,000 active soldiers and 300,000 reservists. It is formally considered a terrorist organization. It is thought to be behind various terrorist attacks including the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut and the 1992 Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires. In the 2006 Lebanon War, it helped Hezbollah in its rocket campaign against Israel. To this day it foments terrorist activity in Iraq and Afghanistan against allied forces.

Though these religious soldiers have been a fixture in Iran since the revolution, their power has grown in recent years.

During the presidency of “moderate” Mohammad Khatami, Ayatollah Khamenei looked for a way to mitigate the threat to his authority posed by the surging reform movement. In 2004 parliamentary elections, the clerics of the Guardian Council banned 2,500 reformist candidates and, for the first time, allowed former officers of the guardians’ army—more widely known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc)—to run for office. Nearly a third of parliamentarians elected that year were Revolutionary Guardsmen.

The next year, disenchanted reformists stayed away from the presidential election. The resultant shrunken electorate—coupled with a massive get-out-the-vote campaign by Revolutionary Guardsmen—opened the door for former irgc commander Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to claim victory. Ahmadinejad thanked his fellow Guardsmen by hiring them. He stacked his first cabinet with retired irgc officers, and appointed many other veterans as ambassadors, mayors, provincial governors and senior bureaucrats.

For the first time since the revolution, conservatives essentially dominated all aspects of Iran’s government.

But then, ironically, the Frankenstein monster that Khamenei released to stamp out the reform movement began to take on a life of its own.

Since then, the irgc has grown into a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. Institutions with irgc links are buying more and more state-owned enterprises. Iran’s Central Bank recently gave permission for the irgc’s charity foundations to begin operating as banks. Through ties to several dozen seemingly legitimate front companies, subsidiaries and trusts, the irgc is believed to now control about one third of Iran’s economy.

Its engineering arm, a firm called Khatam al-Anbiya, is a colossus—Iran’s largest company. Known as Ghorb, this firm employs 40,000 people and holds as many as 1,700 government contracts, mostly in military projects, including Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. It has also expanded into other sectors including construction, telecommunications and energy, developing oil and gas fields, building dams, roads, bridges and railroad tunnels.

The Guard Corps also dominates Iran’s smuggling industry, estimated at $12 billion a year.

The irgc’s profile has skyrocketed since last year’s fraudulent presidential election, when it became the government’s heaviest weapon against protesters. It banned opposition press. It started its own political tribunal to prosecute dissidents. Many analysts say this marked a shift in Iran’s power structure in favor of the most militant faction of the conservative establishment.

Iran is supposed to be a religious regime, with clerical leaders in supreme power, ruling over civilian leaders, with the military supporting them all.

Today, however, this military organization is becoming a government within a government. It has gained control of Iran’s media. It rules the parliament. It fills the governmental administration, including in the Interior Ministry, which oversees elections.

If Khamenei is uncomfortable with the situation, there is little he can do about it—because beyond the irgc is a populace largely unsupportive of his regime. As last summer’s election illustrated, Khamenei needs the backing of the irgc to keep his grip on power.

Back in February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran was becoming a “military dictatorship.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the same thing in an interview last month. But lest you mistake this as a sign that Washington is ready to take Iran on, in the same interview Secretary Gates said he thinks Iran’s growing militarization increases the odds of its complying with international controls on its nuclear program. “I think you have a reasonable chance of getting the Iranian regime to come to their senses and realize their security is probably more endangered by going forward than by stopping it,” he said.

Fat chance.

As radical as Khamenei is, by all accounts Ahmadinejad and his fellow Revolutionary Guardsmen are worse. “Ahmadinejad is willing to risk death by virtue of his apocalyptical obsession [that] doing so will pave the way for the 12th imam’s return—a precursor to the world’s submission to Islam,” wrote Marine veteran James Zumwalt for Human Events. “With an irgc military force comprised of religious fanatics willing to die for Islam, with an irgc hand on a trigger that could start a nuclear war, with irgc loyalties torn between either a mad cleric or obsessed president, we should take no comfort knowing the irgc is now in the driver’s seat concerning whether to continue Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.”

As the Trumpet stated in its July 1997 issue, “The Bible prophesies of an Islamic king of the south to be a major political force in this end time. Religion will be the guiding force behind the king of the south. As these prophecies unfold, we can expect religious radicals and dictatorial rulers to gain prominence as they enter onto the world stage for one final scene.”

The Prophet Daniel foretold that “at the time of the end shall the king of the south push.” We live in the “time of the end” today.

The word push means to strike, to push with the horn, or to wage war. Push is a violent word! Iran has never been meek and mild in its foreign policy—but it is becoming more aggressive. Daniel spoke of a forceful, provocative push unlike any we have yet seen. As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has said, “[T]he stage is being set—right now—for this to occur!” (The King of the South).

Watch for Iran’s foreign policy to become far more pushy. With all power consolidated in the hands of its ultraconservatives, this country’s brashness and confidence as a real force in the region—and worldwide—is about to explode.