The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not itself an elite formation, but it does contain the Quds Force, a covert operations formation.
When the Town Car hits the spike strips the car's tires remain inflated, they aren't shown being flat until after it comes to a stop.
The unit sent to carry out the kidnapping is supposed to be an elite one, but they don't seem to have a very good grasp of tactics, at least not when they have to improvise, and their fire discipline isn't very good--they use a lot of automatic fire instead of aimed single shots.