A theocracy, like any other regime based on a totalitarian ideology, does not have room for competing ideologies; all of them go after any alternative ideology trying to crystalise and nip it in the bud. In a democracy, alternative ideologies thrive and wait in the wings to unseat the current dispensation at the next elections. Totalitarian ideologies, including those based on religion, permit no possibility of a different ideology coming to power through constitutional means and can be unseated only through violent civil wars.q One non-ideological component of the state, however, is present in all states, totalitarian, democratic, monarchical or any other. This component is nurtured by every state and is made the ultimate coercive power of the state.

In democracies, the armed forces protect the state and its constitutional structure from external threats and if need be, they are ordered by the state to come to the aid of an overwhelmed civil administration. They, however, remain an instrument of the state, which remains the hand that holds the instrument and uses it as guided by the constitution and the laws. In totalitarian regimes, on the other hand, the primary function of the armed forces becomes to protect the regime from internal challenges. This enlarged role mostly necessitates that the head of the state wear a uniform on special occasions to indicate the fusion of civil authority and the military arm. As long as the civil authority has an honourable social contract with the masses, the military usually keeps the pretence of obedience, unsure whether it can handle a mass upsurge and civil war, as happened in Myanmar. The civil administration de facto led by the Nobel laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi had given an unduly large role to the Buddhist clergy and instigated by them, the people and the military had been attacking the Rohingyas. It can be fairly said that the civil administration was drifting towards a theocracy, with the military donning the uniform of a Praetorian guard.

In 27 B.C., Roman Emperor Augustus set up an elite unit of troops to protect him. Highly paid, these Praetorian Guards soon became influential in the polity and played a role in imperial successions and even assassinations. During the succeeding two millennia into the present, every regime, that was not based on the expressed will of the people, felt the need to raise such an elite force. Some flamboyant ones had theirs staffed by only women, as were those of Libya’s Gaddafi, who were usually called the Amazonian Guard. Ayatollah Khomeini, who came to power through an Islamic Revolution in 1979, immediately felt the need of such a force which had to be under his command and not that of the regular armed forces of the country and the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was raised.

Although, even under the Islamic Constitution of Iran, there is the legislature, judiciary and a Prime Minister in addition to a President, the IRGC commander-in-chief is appointed by and reports only to the Supreme Leader, an unelected religious cleric who, for all practical purposes holds office for life. Khamenei, the successor of Khomeini, was killed at the beginning of the current war, leaving a power vacuum. The Assembly of Experts, a body of Clerics, had the task of finding a new leader, but killings had left this body in disarray. That is when the Praetorian IRGC stepped in; they wanted to thrust forward somebody not so strong politically and not so popular among the people. Such a person could never assert authority over the IRGC and will become another figurehead like the president or the prime minister. This was the classic playbook of leadership crisis in a totalitarian regime in general and in a theocracy in particular.

The collapse of a theocratic regime rarely produces a stable vacuum. Instead, it often unleashes a contest over legitimacy, coercion, and institutional control in which the most organized and disciplined actor, typically the military, emerges as the decisive force. In such moments, praetorian dynamics take hold: the guardians of the state transform into its rulers. This is a recurring historical pattern in which religious authority, once weakened or discredited, is supplanted by military custodianship that claims to restore order while often reshaping the political system in its own image.

Understanding this transition requires unpacking two core concepts: theocracy and praetorianism. A theocracy is a political system in which religious authority is either identical with or dominant over state power. Its legitimacy derives from divine sanction, sacred law, or clerical hierarchy. A praetorian system, by contrast, is one in which an elite component of the military, rather than remaining subordinate to civilian authority, becomes the principal arbiter of political power. To feel the unbridled power of the Praetorian Guard, we have to hark back to one of the most evil totalitarian regimes in history, which has become a metaphor for such regimes.

Hitler’s Nazi Germany had the Schutzstaffel or the SS as it was commonly called, which like Augustus, had been created by Hitler to protect himself. It swore unconditional loyalty to Hitler and to no one else. Senior army commanders trembled in the presence of the dreaded SS, which under Heinrich Himmler, starting with less than 300 men in 1929 grew to almost 900,000 by 1944. Much like Iran’s IRGC, the SS developed its own combat wing, the Waffen SS, which had 38 divisions by the end of the Second World War. It had its independent chain of command, reporting directly to Himmler and Hitler, ignoring local commanders of the Wehrmacht or the regular army. It forced generals to hold impossible positions, undermining their tactical decisions. Numerous books including “Why the Germans Lose at War: The Myth of German Military Superiority,” “The Death of Hitler’s War machine” and “Waffen SS: Hitler’s Army at War” put a substantial part of the blame for Germany’s defeat on this friction between the Waffen-SS and the Wehrmacht.

History is repeating itself in Iran. Last week, an article in the Euronews, “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards tighten grip on power as civilian leadership sidelined” said that the IRGC “has evolved from a theocratic wartime force into a dominant military-economic power.” It stands at the centre of a shifting political structure and “appears to have seized control of the decision-making process with its hardline approach.” In the war, numerous senior IRGC commanders have been killed, including the intelligence chief Majid Khademi and naval commander Alireza Tangsiri. Saeed Izadi, senior Quds force Commander has also been killed; he looked after Iran’s proxies in Palestine. The present Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, successor of his father, has been equally unpopular among the clerics, the IRGC, the army and the people at large. He has not been seen and his voice has not been heard since his elevation and only written communication purporting to be from him has been released.

All these facts about Mojtaba and the deaths of his own commanders suit the present IRGC chief Ahamad Vahidi who is now virtually autonomous. During the parleys in Islamabad, the Iranian delegation was for all appearances, led by the Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. They were, however, chaperoned by a strong contingent of IRGC who remained constantly in touch with Vahidi. It has been reported that the IRGC pushed a maximalist and uncompromising position leading to the failure of the talks.

True to the copybook development of the Praetorian Guards, the theocracy has now been substituted by the IRGC; the guardians raised by Khomeini have now become the rulers of that country. In Rome, alarmed by the rising power of the Praetorian Guard, Emperor Constantine had disbanded them 400 years later. In Iran, nobody strong enough to do that has survived the war. The IRGC will not let go of their power till starved into submission; in the process, Iranians at large will starve too. / DAILY WORLD /

( R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal.)