everyone is loyal to him, He is hyperactive. He knows every low-ranking commander and even the names of their children'", according to Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The Basij and Pasdaran were instrumental in crushing the Green Movement, and this power gave them political supremecy in Iran. According to at least one source (Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford), the regime “clearly ... believed it was going to lose control, and the IRGC and the Basij saved the day. The result is that the IRGC now has the upper hand. Khamenei knows that without the IRGC he’d be out of a job in twenty-four hours.” Yahya Rahim Safavi, head of the IRGC since 1997, was dismissed as commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards in August 2007. The dismissal of Safavi disrupted the balance of power in Iran to the advantage of conservatives. Analysis in the international press considered the removal of Safavi to be a sign of change in the defense strategies of Iran, but the general policies of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are not personally determined by its commander. Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in Tehran, Iran on 27 November 2020. Fakhrizadeh was believed to be the primary force behind Iran's covert nuclear program for many decades. The New York Times reported that Israel's Mossad was behind that attack and that Mick Mulroy, the former Deputy Defense Secretary for the Middle East said the death of Fakhirizadeh was "a setback to Iran’s nuclear program" and he was also a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that "will magnify Iran’s desire to respond by force." Military structure In late July 2008 reports originating that the IRGC was in the process of dramatically changing its structure. In a shake-up, in September 2008 Iran's Revolutionary Guards established 31 divisions and an autonomous missile command. The new structure changes the IRGC from a centralized to a decentralized force with 31 provincial corps, whose commanders wield extensive authority and power. According to the plan, each of Iran's thirty provinces will have a provincial corps, except Tehran Province, which will have two. Joint Staff Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Joint Staff Basij The Basij is a paramilitary volunteer militia or "plainclothes militia" founded by the order of the Ayatollah Khomeini in November 1979. On November 4, 1979, in