A paramilitary force, it also played a significant part in politics from its establishment in 1910 during the Qajar dynasty until the advent of the Pahlavi Iran in 1921.

The Imperial Iranian Gendarmerie (ژاندارمری شاهنشاهی ایران) and the National Police (Shahrbani شهربانی or Nazmiyeh نظمیه) gained in numbers and responsibilities.

He tended to shuffle army personnel back and forth between their ordinary duties and temporary positions in internal security agencies, in order to minimize the possibility of any organized coups against the throne.

IRP leaders quickly appointed Gendarmerie and police officers loyal to the Revolution to revive and reorganize the two bodies under the Islamic Republic.

Colonel Khalil Samimi, appointed in 1983 by the influential Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri, then Minister of Interior, who was credited with reorganizing the National Police according to the IRP's Islamic guidelines.

In addition to Brigadier General Ahmad Mohagheghi, the commander in the early republican period who was executed in late summer of 1980 and five colonels were purged.

Colonel Ali Kuchekzadeh played a major role in reorganizing and strengthening the Gendarmerie after its near collapse in the early revolutionary period.

The Gendarmerie was disbanded in 1991, along with the National Police and Islamic Revolution Committees; all three of these organizations being merged into the present-day Law Enforcement Force.

[9] The current commander is IRGC-born Brigadier General Hossein Ashtari, former first deputy chief of police under Esmail Ahmadi Moqaddam; he relieved his predecessor and was appointed by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on March 9, 2015.

[28] On December 3, 2022, the Attorney General of Iran, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, said in Qom that the police guidance patrol is not under the supervision of the judiciary system and it is closed now from where it was begun first.