The Shifting Image and Role of the Guards
The war fostered camaraderie among the men and boys who fought on the front. Those who survived the trials of battle could rise rapidly through the ranks. Enlisted soldiers could become company, battalion, or, at times, brigade commanders. Talented soldiers were promoted quickly. Eager college students clamoring for leadership were often ordered to the front for three months to test their abilities. The Guards, which now included the uniformed and activated Basij, numbered approximately 300,000 by the end of the war. Many served in combat against Iraqi forces or against the Kurds in Iran and Iraq. Some were deployed to Lebanon to support Hezbollah. Most of the Guards demobilized at the end of their military service. As in the aftermath of other major wars, veterans sought employment or admission to higher education. Some Pasdaran and Basij veterans started families, reenrolled in school, or took the low-level jobs reserved for them within the government administration. While Basij members could enroll in universities without passing entrance examinations, some young veterans had no clear direction for the future and grappled with their wartime losses. Some pursued career opportunities within the Basij. Later, Basij became involved in construction; today, the organization penetrates every sector of Iran’s political economy.
Within the Guards, the Basij’s mission shifted from traditional territorial defense to a broader mandate of “defending against threats to Iran.” No longer fighting from foxholes or marching in rows toward machine-gun nests, the Basij were, by the 1990s, tasked with enforcing virtue, a challenging proposition. Many of the Basij were young, uneducated, and ill-equipped to distinguish between morality and sin. Teenagers relied on broad guidance from Basij leaders, often no more educated than they were. New Basij were not trained in crowd control or police work; to make matters worse, some had been coarsened and traumatized by their experiences in the war.
The image of pious, youthful Basij volunteers praying in muddy trenches and foxholes had disappeared. The picture of brave, self-sacrificing youth had deteriorated into roving bands of hard-bitten thugs. By the 1990s, most Iranians had grown to loathe them and would speak of the “gangsterization” of a once-esteemed service, which was now also dubbed execrable “shadowy vigilantes” by Western news organizations.
Today, the mission of the Basij is to maintain law and order, enforce Islamic values and virtue, and combat Western culture and other foreign threats. In Khomeini's words, the Basij are instructed to patrol against Satan. It is a morality police force that enforces retrograde dress codes and nonfraternization rules. They harness technology to prevent cyber corruption. For example, Basij teams scour social media for images of women wearing provocative clothing or sporting revealing hairstyles. Basij pulls down satellite dishes and confiscates material they consider obscene. They quote the Koran’s warning about the ever-present Satan, who corrupts culture. In 2019, it became illegal to walk dogs because mullahs declared them impure, and Basij ensured they have no place on city streets.
The Basij perpetuates a culture of death and martyrdom, though the war with Iraq ended over three decades ago. Among the pious, martyrdom for Islam and the revolution is the noblest act achievable by men or women. Young Iranians are still expected to conduct suicide operations. Guards and Basij leaders continue to build a reserve corps of suicide bombers. At the Guards Center for Doctrinal Studies of Security across Frontiers, located at the IHU, young Iranians are encouraged to volunteer for those operations. The mission of the Center is to produce martyrs prepared to kill Americans. Women, as well as men, are aggressively recruited; upon joining, they prepare themselves for a place and time when they will be expected to kill themselves and others.
Protecting the Spirit of the Revolution
The Basij derives its authority from Article 151 of the Iranian Constitution, which requires the government to protect the citizenry. Many of these statutory requirements, as they apply to the Guards, remain fossilized. In October 2009, Major General Jafari stated that the “main mission” of the Basij is the nonmilitary task of confronting “soft threats and soft war.” Khamenei expanded the Basij into all sectors of Iranian society and emphasized that the organization's central role is to preserve and propagate the spirit of the revolution. More than any other branch of the Guards, the Basij has been charged with countering anti-government protests at high schools, universities, factories, and on the street. Other branches of the Guards could be mobilized to repress domestic riots. Jafari strengthened the connection between the Guards' land forces and the Basij to confront hard threats.
According to a University of St. Andrews professor, the Basij periodically creates a sense of emergency as a ruse to exert power and clamp down on burgeoning dissent. The Basij statute identifies three cohorts of personnel. First, there are the Regular Members, who are mobilized in wartime and engage in developmental activities in peacetime. They generally do not receive a salary unless mobilized. When Basij leaders claim to have personnel rosters numbering in the millions, they likely refer to these unsalaried and often untrained cadres. To be sure, Khomeini’s call for a Basij force of twenty million has never been met. Second are Active Members, who are extensively vetted and salaried. The third group is the Special Members, who are members of both the Basij and the Guards’ ground forces.
