Mohsen Sazegara misses the scent of jasmine, the mountains and valleys of home. He fled Iran for America two decades ago and has never stopped wanting to return. Whether he ever will depends largely on the organisation he played a part in creating: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In the first days after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah, Sazegara helped to draft the original charter of a new force, known as the IRGC. Exiled in 2005 after breaking with the clerical establishment, he has watched from afar as the force he once imagined as a safeguard of the revolution has become its ruthless enforcer.
