Afshon Ostovar

Afshon Ostovar is an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is the author of Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards (2016), widely regarded as the definitive English-language scholarly history of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — tracing its ideological origins, institutional development, and operational expansion from 1979 to the present. Ostovar situates the IRGC within the broader religious-ideological framework of the Islamic Republic, examining how its self-conception as the 'vanguard of the Imam' shaped both its internal culture and its external operations including the Quds Force. His research spans Iranian security institutions, proxy networks, and the intersection of religion and military power.