The Hyundai lumbered into the back alley and squeaked to a halt once the driver caught sight of the Volkswagen. The driver flashed his headlights twice, paused, then flashed two more times.
Quds Force commander Rasoul Tavakali keyed his radio and received a quick break in response from his partner, Aziz Ribi. Aziz stood overwatch on the third floor of the building above Rasoul. Instead of a rifle to protect his commander, Aziz hefted an RPG.
The two men had operated within Syria for the past year, feeding information to pro-Assad forces. Their work lead to the deaths of countless members of the Syrian Democratic Force. This time, Rasoul knew, they were targeting American special forces.
Rasoul tapped the brake peddle twice, flashing red against the building.
The driver pulled forward and hopped out of the truck. He scampered over to Rasoul.
Younger every year, Rasoul thought.
The driver, a boy barely fourteen years old, stared wide-eyed at Rasoul. The boy wore the yellow and black patch of the Fatemiyoun Brigade. Rasoul had little doubt the boy was an orphan pressed into service after the Brigade slaughtered his family.
“What is your name, boy?” Rasoul asked.
“Maher.” The boy’s voice shook.
Rasoul chuckled. The boy’s name meant skilled.
“Are you skilled at killing, Maher?”
Maher stood at attention. “Yes, sir!”
Another chuckle. “I’m sure you are.” Rasoul slid a USB drive to the boy. “Get this to your commander, Maher. It has locations for the Syrian and American camps near Khasham and Al Tabiyeh.”
The boy took the small piece of plastic and metal. He stared at it before stuffing it into a pocket of his filthy clothes.
Rasoul held up two chocolate bars. The boy tracked them like a dog on a hunt.
“Don’t get lost, boy.” Rasoul tossed the candy into the dirt. He sped off as the boy hunted in the dark for the treat.
When I started writing Wild Card, I wanted an antagonist that felt real—an organization that operated in the shadows, with reach, discipline, and purpose. Enter Iran’s Quds Force, the elite arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). They were the perfect choice: secretive, ruthless, and utterly committed to exporting Tehran’s interests across the Middle East and beyond.
What Is the Quds Force?
The Quds Force isn’t your typical military unit. It’s Iran’s covert operations wing—a hybrid of intelligence agency, special forces, and paramilitary network. Founded after the 1979 revolution, the group reports directly to the Supreme Leader. Its operatives are trained not just to fight but to manipulate: building alliances with militias, smuggling weapons, running influence campaigns, and orchestrating attacks far from Iran’s borders.
In short, they’re the unseen hand of Iran’s foreign policy.
Selection, Training, and Operations Across the Middle East
Becoming a Quds officer isn’t about physical endurance alone—it’s about belief. Candidates are handpicked from within the Revolutionary Guard, often men who’ve proven their devotion to Iran’s revolutionary ideals. Recruits are tested relentlessly—psychological profiling, ideological vetting, and months of isolation that strip away individuality until only obedience remains.
Their training is as much mental as physical. Beyond weapons and tactics, they’re schooled in counterintelligence, cryptography, cultural assimilation, and covert diplomacy. They learn how to disappear into foreign cities, how to turn tribal leaders or local warlords into allies, and how to coordinate proxy operations that can’t be traced back to Tehran.
From there, operatives are deployed across the region to extend Iran’s influence. The Quds Force runs supply lines to Hezbollah in Lebanon, coordinates militia operations in Iraq, supports the Assad regime in Syria, and funds Houthi rebels in Yemen. They operate with the precision of a chess player moving pieces across an entire continent—arming some groups, undermining others, always steering events toward Tehran’s advantage.
In Iraq, Quds officers embedded with Shia militias during the insurgency that followed the U.S. invasion. In Syria, they trained snipers and coordinated battlefield logistics that helped keep Assad in power. In Yemen, they turned the Houthis into a regional threat capable of striking deep into Saudi Arabia. Even in Gaza, their influence can be felt in weapons supply chains and tactical training passed along to militant groups.
Methods and Missions
The Quds Force has spent decades perfecting deniable warfare. They finance and direct militias, deliver advanced weapons to proxy fighters, and conduct cyber and terror operations targeting Western interests. From Iraq to Syria to Africa and Latin America, their fingerprints are everywhere.
Their late commander, Qassem Soleimani, turned the Quds Force into one of the most feared organizations in the world. His death in 2020 was a turning point, but the machine he built didn’t stop. It adapted.
Proxy networks and militia-building
One of the Quds Force’s signature methods is building and sustaining proxy militias that act on Iran’s behalf across the region. Rather than projecting power only through conventional armies, Tehran cultivates local fighting forces — from Hezbollah in Lebanon to multiple Shia militias in Iraq — that provide Iran with persistent regional influence while creating plausible deniability.
Arms trafficking and logistics
The Quds Force organizes sophisticated logistics chains to move weapons and materiel to its partners and proxies. These supply lines can include clandestine sea and land routes, front companies, and coordination with allied groups to conceal origin and destination. Public reporting links such logistics to the arming of Hezbollah, the Houthis, and militia units in Iraq and Syria. (Reported analyses emphasize the scale and geographic reach rather than operational step-by-step details.)
Training, advising, and battlefield coordination
Beyond materiel, the Quds Force embeds advisors and special-operations personnel to train, plan, and sometimes lead proxy units in combat. In Syria and Iraq, Quds advisors helped build command-and-control, logistics, and targeting capabilities that materially changed local battlefields — effectively multiplying Iran’s influence without the footprint of a conventional deployment.
Covert intelligence, targeted operations, and deniable acts
The Quds Force runs foreign-facing intelligence and covert operations that range from surveillance and abduction plots to targeted strikes and assassinations in some cases. Analysts describe a pattern of deniable operations calibrated to influence political outcomes or remove perceived threats—again carried out so that attribution to Tehran is difficult.
Financial networks, front companies, and sanctions evasion
To sustain these activities, the Quds Force (and Iran more broadly) leverages complex financial methods: sanctioned entities, informal value transfer systems, and front companies that move funds or procure dual-use goods. U.S. and international financial advisories have highlighted how these networks enable weapon transfers, recruitment, and proxy support.
Information operations and political influence
The Quds Force doesn’t only operate with guns and bombs. It uses media, political outreach, and influence operations — working through sympathetic political actors, religious networks, and local elites — to shape public opinion, recruit, and create governance structures favorable to Iran’s interests. This “soft” side of power projection helps turn military gains into longer-term strategic advantage.
Adaptation and strategic patience
Finally, perhaps the Quds Force’s most potent method is patient, adaptive strategy. Under commanders like Qassem Soleimani, the organization pursued long timelines, building institutions and relationships that outlast tactical setbacks. His 2020 death was significant, but the structures and strategies he built have proven resilient.
Rasoul stalked across the pock-marked field on the outskirts of Khasham. The twisted remains of Russian armored vehicles—easy prey for deadly accurate American artillery—stretched across the landscape.
Quds Force spent weeks planning the attack on the Syrian Democratic Forces headquarters, even enlisting the support of Russian mercenaries. In less than an hour, Americans eradicated the entire force with their cosmic ability to detect and destroy anything within reach.
Rasoul coughed as a gust of wind whipped up the sour scent of death. Something on the ground flickered as it caught the light. Rasoul crouched, pinching a candy bar wrapper between his fingers. He tugged it free, exposing a small, ashen hand. Rasoul pulled on the hand. Loose dirt shifted and the slender arm broke free. Scorch marks marred the familiar yellow and black patch of the Fatemiyoun Brigade. The arm connected to the thin workings of shoulders. Everything below—from the torso down—was ripped from the small body with concussive force.
Maher stared at Rasoul with lifeless eyes. Rasoul grunted.
His satellite phone rang. He dropped the mangled remains to reach for it.
“Salam,” Rasoul said. Only one person had the number.
“Get back to Tehran,” Soroush Zand said. “There has been an incident that needs your attention.”
“I’m standing in the middle of an ‘incident’ now, Soroush,” Rasoul said, in a rare moment of disobedience to his commander.
“Tehran, now. Bring your men. You’re leaving for the U.S. after.”
Want to find out what happens next? The story continues in Wild Card.