I spoke to Khamenei’s footsoldiers. He is in trouble.

“We zealous youth will not forget cowardice of the decision makers [in Syria]”, a young radical from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iranian regime’s paramilitary, tells me.

Fault lines are emerging in the IRGC over the handling of Syria, which resulted in the collapse of Bashar al-Assad. The younger radicals are enraged at what they see as the “abandonment” of Syria. These divisions within the IRGC are causing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, major problems.

Yet, the internal backlash inside the IRGC over the senior commanders’ handling of Syria has been overlooked in the West. I spent the final 72 hours of the Assad regime talking with the younger radical ranks of the IRGC. From these conversations and recent trends, it’s clear an internal crisis is looming in the IRGC.

“They found out too late and made late decisions”, another young IRGC member, who blames senior commanders, tells me. In recent years, the divisions between the IRGC’s older, conservative commanders and its younger, radical ranks have widened. The older oligarchic class has typically wielded more influence with Khamenei – but things are shifting. The generational divide began to heat up after successive commanders from the IRGC and its network of militias – including Hezbollah and Hamas – were killed by Israel. This prompted the younger generations to question both the competence and ideological commitment of their seniors.

The targeted killing of Hassan Nasrallah – Hezbollah’s terror chief – resulted in the younger radicals openly attacking the IRGC’s senior oligarchy, accusing them of corruption and even colluding with Mossad. Khamenei’s calculus for the October 1 ballistic missile attack on Israel was in part driven to appease the younger cohort.

But that attack failed to placate the young radicals. With the collapse of Assad, their anger towards the IRGC’s oligarchy has once again become inflamed. They tell me they see the fall of Syria as the “abandonment” of the holy Shia shrines and the “trampling of the blood of the martyrs.”

This was Khamenei’s own making. From 1997 onwards the supreme leader set out to nurture a more ideologically radical and compliant IRGC after only around 15 percent of the IRGC’s second generation (1990-1997) voted for the candidate Khamenei endorsed in the 1997 presidential “election.” This lack of loyalty set off alarm bells for Khamenei. He responded by increasing the time the IRGC spent on ideological indoctrination. The effort was a success. IRGC recruits who joined in the first decade of the 2000s—the third generation—proved ideologically faithful. Pleased with their fervour, Khamenei doubled down, increasing indoctrination to 50 percent of all training in the IRGC.

The supreme leader also reworked recruitment. From 2010 onwards, admission to the IRGC became by invitation only exclusively recruiting those who had been scouted and pre-approved. These measures resulted in the even more extreme fourth generation, who have not only demonstrated high appetite to violently suppress unrest in Iran, but also displayed disproportionate hunger to be deployed to Syria to prop up Assad’s regime under the notion they were defending “holy Shia shrines.” With Khamenei’s green-light, these younger generations also started to mobilise against ideologically corrupt elites within the regime.

But efforts to nurture more radical generations have now backfired, with this cohort becoming “more catholic than the Pope.” They’ve recently turned on their own commanders, slamming their corruption, questioning commitment and hesitancy to strike at the regime’s enemies. And their handling of Syria has taken tensions to a new high.

One zealot from the IRGC’s militia, the Basij, tells me, “the situation stinks like the [deal with] the Taliban…but now’s not the time for diplomacy, it’s time for the battlefield.” Another tells states: “I spit on political leaders…they have to answer for the trampling on the blood of the martyrs” — another member of the Basij states. “If Haj Qassem [Soleimani] was alive he would not have allowed the holy Shia shrines to fall into the hands of the Takfiris”.

While lots of anger is geared towards Assad, the young radicals are also once again attacking the IRGC older elites. The problem for Khamenei is that he can’t afford to simply ignore these younger voices or cast them aside as these are the very foot soldiers who take to the streets to suppress anti-regime protestors in Iran. Among the regime’s elite, there remains a major fear that Assad’s fall will have a domino effect and lead to unrest in Iran. For Khamenei and the IRGC, this means keeping the young radicals satisfied is even more important. He can’t afford to lose or see this cohort demoralised. Against the backdrop of succession and an incoming Trump presidency, Khamenei – whose seen his imperialist regional project collapse – is now under immense pressure to prevent divisions within the IRGC from spiralling out of control.

Kasra Aarabi is the director for IRGC Research at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI)