UPI -- Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has widened its ever-expanding economic power with a no-tender contract from the Oil Ministry to develop two big natural gas fields in southern Fars province.
Even before the April 30 award, the IRGC's engineering and construction arm, Khatam-ol-Anbia, was the largest contractor of government projects in Iran and has become a massive business conglomerate that is independent of state regulation.
"Within the Islamic Republic, and increasingly in Iran's external trade, the IRGC is an economic powerhouse," says Ali Alfoneh, an Iranian analyst working in the West.
"The Islamic Republic, once governed by the Shiite clergy and guarded by the IRGC, is developing into an economy dominated by the military."
