Ali Alfoneh

Ali Alfoneh is a Danish-Iranian political scientist and senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He is best known as the originator of the influential thesis — developed across years of primary-source research — that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has transformed the Islamic Republic from a clerical theocracy into a military dictatorship. His book Iran Unveiled: How the Revolutionary Guards Is Transforming Iran from Theocracy into Military Dictatorship (2013) is a foundational text in IRGC studies. Alfoneh systematically tracked IRGC officers entering civilian government, the judiciary, and the economy to document this structural transformation. He has previously been a fellow at AEI and has briefed European and US policymakers.