Dominators of Iran’s economy: who are Khatam al-Anbi?

The body currently in the headlines is the “Central Headquarters” (Emergency Headquarters): the coordination arm between the Iranian security forces, the Revolutionary Guards and the army, and which manages the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. This unit was established in 1983 in favor of the Iran-Iraq war by Ali Khamenei, who was then the commander of Iran’s armed forces, and was eliminated in the opening blow of the “Harry’s Roar” operation.

A separate body that is considered no less important is the “Construction Headquarters” which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, and which Khamenei established in 1989 in an attempt to “assist in the reconstruction” of Iran after that war. In his favor, the Ayatollahs’ regime made sure to fascinate the Iranian economy, and in this way ensure regular flows of funds to the Revolutionary Guards from civilian enterprises.

The name Khatam al-Anbi was given in addition to an air defense base that was established in the early 1990s, and its role is to coordinate the air defense activities of the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian army.

The money always flows in a method protected by sanctions

The working principle of the construction headquarters is to focus on things that are always needed, for example, construction, road construction and communication, and therefore the money will always flow to the Revolutionary Guards. This is a method protected by sanctions, since these include international trade but do not prevent the flow of domestic funds in huge volumes. This was reflected in the construction of the nuclear facility in Fordow where, according to the UN Security Council, companies affiliated with Khatam al-Anbiy took an active part.

“Khatem al-Anbiy enjoys budgets of tens of billions, and good ties with China,” says Benny Sabati, an expert on Iranian affairs at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). “On the other hand, to this day they have not really taken care of a significant part of the ruins from the war with Iraq in certain areas. They took care of murdering business rivals, and built roads, laid fiber, and created a metro.”

Sabetti describes a plan from 2005, in the framework of which Italy transferred to Iran a machine for creating a tunnel. “Thus, some of the Iranian missile cities established by the construction headquarters have components from European countries. They are as if a civilian body, which also builds Soviet-style dams. During the last war, it was revealed that they dried up rivers and caused problems for agriculture and drinking water, in order to meet the needs of the missile cities and nuclear facilities.”

Only from the UN data and international sanctions on the subsidiary companies of Khatam Al-Anbi’s construction headquarters, you can find a particularly long list of entities from various fields, including: “Patter Institute” which established large water transmission projects, “Oriental Kish” which is involved in drilling and marine infrastructures, such as oil and gas, “Spanir” which is one of the operators of the South Fars natural gas field, and also, “Makin” which operates within the framework of large mining projects in the Islamic Republic.

Dr. Meir Javdanfer, an Iran researcher at the Lauder School of Government at Reichman University, compares the way the Iranian economy is shut down in favor of Khatam al-Anbi, to the way the Egyptian army dominates the local economy. “Khatem al-Anbi is a very important economic body for the Revolutionary Guards. He is involved in military issues, but especially in controlling the Iranian economy. It is a large monopoly power that harasses and oppresses other players in the Iranian market, and they can do this using the weapons of the Revolutionary Guards,” he explains. “Khomeini realized that one of the ways in which it is possible to control the people is to give the keys to the economy to the Revolutionary Guards, with the goal that they will have the economic interests to maintain the revolution with greater determination.”

Huge contracts without tenders: reducing the monopoly has failed

In the 47 years that have passed since the Islamic revolution, the method of expropriating the economy for Khatam al-Anbiy has “improved”. During the tenure of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most extreme figure even in the terms of the Ayatollah regime, the construction headquarters flourished: Ahmadinejad awarded the subsidiary companies a long series of huge contracts without tenders, and in August 2011 the former commander of Khatam al-Anbiy, Rustam Al-Jasmi, was even appointed Minister of Petroleum.

At certain times certain moderate elements in the Islamic Republic strove to reduce Khatam al-Anbi’s infrastructure monopoly, but failed. The most prominent of them is Ahmadinejad’s replacement, Hassan Rouhani, who tried to take advantage of the 2015 nuclear agreement and the reduction of sanctions in favor of attracting foreign companies to strategic projects, and also demanded that Khatam al-Anbia’s subsidiaries pay taxes like everyone else. Bottom line, nothing fundamental has changed in the Iranian infrastructure industry.

From the management of the war to the aggressive suppression of protests

The economy is only one aspect of the name “Khatem al-Anbiy”, with the role of the central headquarters being to sit over the Revolutionary Guards and the army and coordinate their actions. Therefore, the headquarters commanders became a central target for Israeli attacks. In the operation “With a dog”, the two commanders of the emergency command, who actually served as the chief of staff of the war, were eliminated in about two weeks, with Khatam al-Anbi leading the fighting and approving the fire plans. In the opening blow of the operation, the commander Alam Ali Rashid was eliminated, and about two weeks later his replacement Ali Shamdani, who was also one of the figures closest to Khamenei, was eliminated.

International attention to Khatam al-Anbi is not limited to Israel. In recent months, the US has tried to track down the current commander, Ali Abdallahi, with the attention on him being on the same line as the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Ahmed Vahidi. Abdallahi was not only involved in the activities of Hari’s Roar, but also in the use of the Iranian internal security forces, including the Basij, for particularly aggressive suppression of protests.

“The emergency headquarters was initially called the ‘Defense Council’ in the 1980s and then moved to the headquarters of the armed forces,” notes Sabati. “This is the body for the management of the war, the distribution of forces, prioritization. Although they operate under the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, they are also directly subordinate to the Supreme Leader, who appoints the officials. This is a body that acts like the National Security Council, making recommendations to the leader, who sometimes returns instructions.”

The emergency command is currently managing the aggression towards the United Arab Emirates, with its spokesman Ebrahim Zulfkari defining the announcements of the Ministry of Defense in Abu Dhabi summarizing the missile attacks as “baseless”, and in fact dictating Tehran’s line of lies. “Allowing foreign military forces and equipment to operate from their territory may have consequences for regional security,” Zolfkari threatened, amid reports that Israeli air defense systems took part in dealing with Iranian attacks in the Gulf.