New Generations of Guards
The early postrevolutionary period provided openings for ambitious youth, as discussed earlier. Some of those who joined the Guards in the early 1980s were opportunists, and some were committed zealots. Some were both. Membership in the Guards afforded privileged access to housing, goods, and services and provided a fast track to political and social mobility. As in other revolutions, many career government bureaucrats with prior service were ejected and replaced by party stalwarts. The talented and ambitious had an opportunity because the Guards needed men with skills, intelligence, and commitment. One such was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a high-achieving university student who served as a Guards logistics commander.
There is no evidence that he served in any combat role during his tenure. Nonetheless, his brief and safe service gave him bona fides and fostered relationships that would catapult him to power in the 1990s. Others followed a similar path. As its leadership changed over the years, three broad generations of the Guards developed. The first generation joined during the 1980s. As a shell-shocked cohort of frontline fighters, this generation shares a bond common to combat veterans of many wars. Many had religious backgrounds and stellar military resumes. Born in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, most of this cohort is retired.
The second generation of Guards was recruited after 1989 and tends to be less religious and ideological than the first generation, which joined the organization after Ayatollah Khomeini's death. Many saw service as a springboard to careers in government. Others were dead-enders and needed some employment. Most lacked the fervor of the earlier generation that fought in the trenches. Like the European youth of the 1920s, a lost generation of Iranians felt stymied and rebellious, to the point where Supreme Leader Khamenei became concerned about the waning zeal in the Guards. In 2000, he responded to this perceived problem by ordering what, by all accounts, was a largely successful enhanced indoctrination program for Guard members.
The third and successive generations of Guards are those recruited after 2000. Many come from families in which their fathers served in or were strongly connected to the Guards. This generation tends to be more religious than the second generation. Some of this dedication can be explained by enhanced ideological and political training after 2000 and screening during recruitment. Since 2008, recruiters have sought religiously conservative applicants.
“Pasdar Forever”
After consolidating power, Iran’s leaders built educational machinery to indoctrinate the youth in its revolutionary ethos. Leaders reasoned that loyalty to the regime would remain fixed if it was forged at an early age. In Khamenei's words, the more ideological cadre “would remain Pasdar (a member of the Guards) forever” and would serve as a pipeline for future leadership. Iran prizes youth as human capital for tomorrow’s political leadership, a phenomenon common in authoritarian and collectivist states. Much of this ideological training was overseen by the Basij.
Iranian youth indoctrination programs quickly became eerily comparable to those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler affirmed, “He alone who owns the youth gains the future. Leaders of the Hitler Youth mobilized young Germans to serve Nazi ends. From 1939, 82 percent of German boys and girls between the ages of ten and eighteen belonged to the Hitler Youth or an affiliate. Boys were hammered by martial jingoism, paramilitary training, and full-contact athletics.
The girls were groomed by campfire romanticism, folklore, and traditional themes of motherhood. Similarly, in the Soviet Union, children first became Little Octobrist and then Young Pioneers, whose motto was “We promise to . . . love and cherish the Motherland passionately, to live as the great Lenin bade us, as the Communist Party teaches us.” Orphans were raised in collective homes where the state molded them into “New Soviet People.” The
young in Russia and Germany were trained to spy on their classmates, friends, enemies, and parents. Distant, though modified, echoes of these techniques would be heard in Iran by the 1980s.
Beginning in 1982, Iran’s primary and secondary education required that ideological and political values be standardized and taught nationally. Today, curricula focus on religious and political indoctrination. The content includes theology, with a strong focus on Shia practices and customs. Guards-produced publications, including books, booklets, and pamphlets, are distributed in schools. One book, Angels of Shrine, is aimed at children as young as five. Written in the form of bedtime poetry, the book’s text and illustrations eulogize fallen Iranian soldiers and celebrate the heroism of Shia. As part of education, Basij-run “resistance centers” prepare children to join Basij units upon transferring to middle school in early adolescence. Then they join Pouyandegan (or Seekers) in middle school and Pishgaman (or Standard Bearers) in high school. Throughout, children are taught that Western imperialism dates back to the British tobacco monopoly of 1890–92 and the oil concession in 1901.
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