The most dangerous form of political evil is not the fanatic shouting in the street, the terrorist carrying a rifle, or even the revolutionary preaching hatred from a podium. History has known all of them, and societies have often survived them. The greater danger begins when fanaticism captures the state itself—when an ideology of hatred inherits ministries, courts, intelligence services, prisons, armed forces, diplomatic missions, national wealth and the legal authority of government. At that moment, violence ceases to be an occasional crime committed against the political order and becomes part of the political order itself. This is the deeper meaning of what happened to Iran in 1979. The revolution did not merely replace one government with another; it gradually transformed a modern state into the institutional vessel of a revolutionary ideology whose survival came to depend upon repression at home and permanent confrontation abroad.

Nearly half a century later, the Middle East is still living with the consequences. Reports that the Islamic Republic is attempting to revitalize its network of armed proxies and prepare the ground for a possible multi-front assault against Israel should therefore be understood as something larger than another episode in the Iran-Israel conflict. According to the Israeli intelligence assessments described in recent reporting, officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been meeting with Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iraqi militias, rebuilding missile and drone inventories, conducting joint training and attempting to restore the operational strength of the so-called Axis of Resistance. If these assessments are accurate, Tehran is not simply preparing for another exchange of missiles. It is contemplating the regionalization of the logic of October 7: simultaneous pressure from several fronts designed to overwhelm Israel militarily, psychologically and strategically.

This is precisely where 1979 becomes indispensable to understanding 2026. Political barbarism does not normally arrive fully formed. It develops through institutions. First an ideology divides humanity into believers and enemies, revolutionaries and traitors, the righteous and the corrupt. Then the state begins to translate those categories into policy. Courts punish ideological deviation; intelligence agencies pursue political enemies; prisons become instruments of social discipline; military organizations acquire theological missions; and foreign policy ceases to be primarily the management of national interests and becomes an extension of revolutionary mythology. Over time, violence is no longer regarded as an unfortunate necessity. It is moralized, sanctified and eventually bureaucratized. Once that process is complete, fanaticism possesses not merely followers but budgets, missiles, intelligence networks, military academies, clandestine organizations and generations of trained operatives.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps represents perhaps the clearest institutional expression of that transformation. It was never designed merely to defend Iran’s territorial borders in the conventional sense. It was created to defend a revolution and........

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