The Brutal Militia Trained to Kill for Iran’s Islamic Regime

Time

DECEMBER 5, 2022 11:48 AM EST

Tara Kangarlou is an Iranian-American journalist who has produced, written and reported for CNN, Al Jazeera America and Al-Monitor. She is the author of The Heartbeat of Iran.

Nearly a dozen weeks into the Iranian people’s anti-government revolt, human rights activists say the death toll has risen to over 400 people—including 60 children—while thousands more remain in detention. Most have been imprisoned, injured, and killed by a diehard group trained by the regime to stifle dissent at all costs.

Daily accounts of brutal crackdowns by the state against its own citizens, tragic killings of individuals, baseless detentions, as well as a series of recurring forced confessions—as practiced by the regime—have further enraged the millions of Iranians who continue to risk their lives for change. Only a handful of protestors—mainly high-profile individuals—have been released on bail in recent days, in an effort to serve the regime’s propaganda.

In addition to other armed forces of the Iranian government, much of the violence carried out against protesters is orchestrated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Known in Farsi as “Sepah e Pasdaran e Enghelab e Eslami,” which translates to the “legion of the guardians of the Islamic Revolution,” the IRGC is one the most powerful, diversified, and heavily-militarized prongs of Islamic Regime’s Armed Forces. This powerful entity reports directly to the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and has been sanctioned by the U,S. and others as a terrorist group. The group is weaponized with its own naval, aerospace, intelligence, ground, and foreign forces (Quds), along with its own militia—the parliamentary volunteers known as Basij, whose unrestricted presence in all aspects of the Iranian society remains a profound source of disquiet and rancor among Iranian citizens.

The IRGC was established in 1979 by the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with the aim of creating an army of religiously-charged devotees whose sole mission would be to protect the “values” and “ideology” of the “Islamic revolution” from both domestic and foreign threats. Over time, however, the IRGC managed to evolve into both a political and commercial force, growing its grip within the country’s most powerful conglomerates and industries—including oil and gas—and a piercing influence in much of the country’s political affairs.

But at its core, the entity has not forsaken its mission of safeguarding a “revolution” that is now supported only by a slender minority, many of whom are influenced by ideology.

“They are armed, ideologically brainwashed, and easily mobilized,” says a political science student in Tehran who has had multiple encounters with the group. “The Basij is one of the mightiest and most sophisticated creations of the Islamic regime.” He added that the regime’s deeply-rooted manipulation of both men and women has created a “low-cost” yet extremely “effective” defense apparatus.

“When you produce your army through a rock-hard ideology that’s so deeply planted in their minds, entwined in every aspect of their lives, and present in the whole of their identity, then you know that you have an invincible force—a concrete wall that encompasses their entire being that cannot ever be broken,” said the student, who asked not to be named for his own security.