The recent appointment of a top commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards as oil minister underlines the growing political and economic power of that elite force at a time when U.S. influence in the region is waning and U.S. forces are quitting Iraq. The Revolutionary Guards Corps is seizing control of all branches of government," declared Ali Alfoneh of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a leading expert on the organization known in Farsi as the Pasdaran.