The Revolutionary Guard demonstrated its fealty to Khamenei most recently by orchestrating the crackdown in January that left thousands of anti-government protesters dead. Now, after his killing, it has the opportunity to seize even more power in the country, some experts say.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency put the number of people killed in the protests at more than 7,000 last week, with nearly 12,000 cases “under review.”

President Donald Trump told a group of reporters on Tuesday that Iran had killed 35,000 protesters.

The Guard was created after the 1979 Iranian Revolution as a parallel force to Iran’s traditional military, which the ruling clergy distrusted and suspected still had loyalties to the ousted shah, or king. Within Iran, the Guard eliminated those perceived as being anti-revolutionary and helped export its ideology across the Middle East.

The Guard’s intelligence branch became the most feared repressive arm of the regime and has its own section in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

Under Khamenei’s watch in the 1990s, it morphed into a political and economic juggernaut, running huge foundations and companies involved in the oil, telecom, construction and other sectors worth billions of dollars.