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The Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Eight Podcast FourWelcome to the final excerpt of Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. This is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter eight and concludes Empire of Terror.
The Mullahs’ Enemies at Home
As of this writing, Major General Salami commands the Guards and boasts that the organization can meet any domestic threat. The claim is dubious. Protests shook the streets in 2019 and early 2020. Moreover, this “sedition” is deepl...
2026-02-1932 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Eight Podcast TwoThe Storm Petrels: Free Thinkers and Artists
Storm petrels are seabirds that are said to warn of an impending storm. Ancient seamen took note when storm petrels circled, squawked, and then flew away. According to lore, the flight of petrels portended a ferocious storm. Iranian free spirits were the first to flee revolutionary Iran, if they could. Like petrels, Iranian free thinkers fled and, if they could, landed on safer shores. Iranian artists and intellectuals, hounded by the Basij and local police and discussed in earlier chapters, have gone in different directions. Googoosh, the most popular chanteuse...
2026-02-1806 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Eight Podcast ThreeLeaders
As of late 2020, Ayatollah Khamenei remains committed to his vision of Iran’s “new civilization,” regularly inveighing against alleged American-Jewish conspiracies. In September 2020, the aged ayatollah tweeted to the world that Arab states seeking peace with Israel are doing so under the pressure of “Israelis & filthy Zionist agents of the U.S.—such as the Jewish member of Trump’s family—with the utmost cruelty against the interests of the World of Islam.” In Iran, the media and the Guards refer to the supreme leader as the “guardian of the Muslim world.” He speaks of transforming the Guards into a la...
2026-02-1807 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Seven Podcast FourBonyads: Black Holes and Persian Empires
Large parts of the Iranian economy are dominated by bloated quasi-state enterprises known as bonyads. They existed for many years before the revolution and became wealthy when Ayatollah Khomeini seized the royal family's fortune. He required that these assets be kept separate from state properties. After the revolution, the enormous assets of the shah and his cronies were given to the bonyads to care for the indigent. The bonyads took ownership and management of the Hyatt, Hilton, Sheraton, and Intercontinental hotels. Twenty-six years later, one British guest described the conditions. “I st...
2026-02-1806 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Seven Podcast ThreeWelcome to an excerpt from Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. This is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter seven and discusses corrupt elements in the IRGC.
Persian Mafia
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service defines the underground economy as income earned off the books. It includes laundered income and trade in explicitly illegal goods, such as narcotics and weapons. Many developing countries hav...
2026-02-1810 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Seven Podcast TwoThe Poor, the Rich, and the Guards
Legions of beggars roam the streets of Iran. Drug-addicted, destitute, and homeless Iranians live under bridges and in the fields. A December 2017 photo series of indigents and drug addicts subsisting in a graveyard near Tehran shocked the consciences of Iranians and highlighted the gap in national wealth. Some people live in open graves and fight over blankets, food, and narcotics. They also live in fear of being harmed or removed.
One related, “Other people bother us or throw rocks at us. . . . Aren’t we human beings?” Some Iranians are su...
2026-02-1809 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Seven Podcast One“Evergreen, gardened, cypressed, cinema’d, oil-tanked, boulevarded, incense-and-armpit cradle of Persian culture.” —DylanThomas observing Iran, circa 1951
Iran’s economy is dominated by government elites, a practice common in the Middle East. In Egypt and Pakistan, military leaders control large, national-level economic enterprises. In Iran, the Guards are the key players. The poor health of Iran’s economy, characterized by inefficiencies, market distortions, and wealth concentration, reflects Tehran’s statist policies and the national reliance on oil and gas exports. The Guards and ruling mullahs benefit from easy access to low-interest, no-interest loans, preferential treatment in contracting for goods and serv...
2026-02-1800 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terrorism - Chapter Six Podcast ThreeDisinformation: Fake News
Active measures also include falsifying facts or disseminating fake news. This is more than polishing a country’s image; it is weaponizing falsehoods for political purposes. According to veteran intelligence analyst John Barron, disinformation often involves clandestine activity. World War II began with a staged attack. German SS operatives transported concentration camp prisoners, dressed as German soldiers, to a radio station near the Polish border. Then SS personnel shot the prisoners and presented their bodies as evidence of a Polish attack against Germany. Germany then used this fake news as a pretext to invade Po...
2026-02-1809 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Six Podcast TwoActive Measures
Unlike classic espionage, which targets agents to obtain secrets, active measures involve influence operations, forgeries, front groups, friendship associations, and propaganda. The Guards engage in these measures as a form of political warfare. Propaganda is disseminated through television, film, newspapers, posters, murals, political actions, rallies, protests, and other activities.
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the new regime established the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). The IRIB, or Sazman-e Seda va Sima-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran, is the primary government agency responsible for television. Section 175 of the Iranian Constitution prohibits the establishment of private broadcasting...
2026-02-1810 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Six Podcast One“The IRGC is not a person; it is a movement.” Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 2017
The Guards have both conventional and unconventional military capabilities. According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army (Artesh) now totals approximately 398,000, while the Guards have an estimated personnel strength of 125,000. The official count is twenty million, but this is hyperbolic boasting. The Artesh and the Guards. Today, the relationship between Iran’s Guards and the Artesh bears some hallmarks of the rivalries between the military forces in Nazi Germany and in the S...
2026-02-1810 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Five Podcast Six Iranian-Supported Iraqi Militia
Iran created the Badr Corps from Iraqi refugees and prisoners of war in the early 1980s. Analysts have compared the Badr Organization in Iraq to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Badr conducted covert paramilitary operations in Iraq during the 1980s and 1990s under orders from the Qods Force. Many Badr Corps fighters have either dual Iraqi-Iranian citizenship or were born in Iran and only received their Iraqi citizenship post-2003.
Badr Corps leaders are highly influential in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior. Badr recruits are often assigned to the Iraqi Army Intelligence...
2026-02-1813 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Five Podcast Four The International Divisions of the sla
In several significant wars of the twentieth century, armies used foreign nationals to augment their ranks. Foreign nationals sometimes fought as independent but affiliated units. Sometimes they were inducted directly into the host armed forces. At other times, foreign nationals fought in international divisions. The subject of novels and folklore, the French Foreign Legion is the most famous and enduring model of this type. The Soviets and Nazis, too, used foreign nationals. The Soviets recruited and commanded foreign battalions and brigades to fight against fascists in Spain, while Germany built foreign divisions t...
2026-02-1811 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Five - Podcast ThreeIran’s Three-Phased Plan
Iran has a flexible, grand strategic plan to expand its global influence. These tactics include cultural, economic, military, and diplomatic elements. In some parts of the world, the Qods Force uses nonmilitary tactics, techniques, and procedures to build influence. National security analyst Joseph M. Humire, testifying before the U.S. Congress on the Guards’ penetration in Latin America, outlined Iran’s three-phased strategy to gain influence there. Humire’s model has broad applicability to Iran’s efforts to gain sway in many Third World, non-Muslim-majority states.
The phases—cultural and economic, diplomatic...
2026-02-1807 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Five Podcast TwoWorld Conquest or Defeat
Khomeini viewed the Third World as an arena for confronting Western influence. Before the revolution, Iranian activists, namely Ali Shariati and Mustapha Chamran, advocated for their theories of universal social justice. Today, the Guards try to outflank American, European, and Israeli diplomatic and economic efforts in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Latin America, and elsewhere. Iran declares itself at war with Western states, and the Third World provides many venues and opportunities for unconventional and non-kinetic warfare.
The Guards pursue three primary foreign policy goals. The first i...
2026-02-1809 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Five Podcast OneThere is no greater source of pride in this world than martyrdom. —The late Haj Qassam Soleimani, 2014. P
olitical and religious rulers in Tehran insist that Iran is the real Mecca, or center of the Muslim world. Iran’s leaders feel morally compelled to spread Iran’s revolution around the globe, as Khamenei promised. Some observers trace the Qods Force’s origins to Operation Ajax in 1953, when revolutionaries concluded that politics could not serve as an agent of change.
Today, with his ever-growing prestige and power in the Shia world, Iran’s supreme leader uses foreign po...
2026-02-1807 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Four Podcast Five Pupil and Student Basij: The “Liar Generation”
The Pupil Basij are students ages twelve to eighteen who participate in religiously directed after-school activities and specialized summer camps. The Pupil Basij organization plays a role similar to that of the Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union or the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany; it straightjackets impressionable minds and discourages free thinking. As in mosques and local communities, Basij representatives in primary schools inculcate revolutionary ideas. Throughout Iran, there are ten thousand Koranic schools to pave the “motorway of martyrdom.”
This indoctrination following the revolution has created generatio...
2026-02-1807 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Four Podcast Four Pupil and Student Basij: The “Liar Generation”
The Pupil Basij comprise students aged 12 to 18 who participate in religiously directed after-school activities and specialized summer camps. The Pupil Basij organization plays a role similar to that of the Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union or the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany; it straightjackets impressionable minds and discourages free thinking. As in mosques and local communities, Basij representatives in primary schools inculcate revolutionary ideas. Throughout Iran, there are ten thousand Koranic schools to pave the “motorway of martyrdom.”
This indoctrination, following the revolution, has created generations of young Ira...
2026-02-1811 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Four Podcast ThreeCallow Youth with Whips
Since the end of the war with Iraq, recruits have been drawn to the Guards for several reasons. Many are devoted to the Islamic Revolution and want to defend it. Others need the food and housing that the service provides. Still others, who are not competitive in other occupations, can find employment there, even in menial roles. The less able might monitor roads and traffic. Although most Basij members do not wear uniforms, they are readily identifiable. The men have short hair, wear camouflage jackets, and openly carry batons, clubs, and chains. In...
2026-02-1808 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Four Podcast TwoThe 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...
2026-02-1807 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Four Podcast OneThe idea of creating the Basij was a divine prophecy [delivered] to the Imam [Khomeini] and can be seen as a wondrous miracle. —Guards deputy commander Hossein Salami, November 2016
On November 25, 1979, Khomeini called for the creation of, in his words, a “twenty-million-man army.” In response, the People’s Militia, later known as the Basij, was established in April 1980. Initially a separate service from the Guards, the Basij fought in the war against Iraq, which lasted from 1980 to 1988. Survival in the trenches would help define a generation of Iranian leaders. The newly formed Basij’s mettle was tested early and...
2026-02-1809 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Three Podcast Eight Luring Opponents to Return: “Clever, Multidimensional and Innovative Tricks”
Early Soviet and Nazi leaders sometimes pressured leading dissidents to return from abroad. One of the most successful early Soviet operations was the Trust, designed to disrupt the anti-Bolshevik White émigré community. By creating a false active opposition on Soviet territory, the Trust lured several prominent dissidents to the Soviet Union, where they were killed. One was Sigmund Georgievich Rosenblum, who took the name Reilly, worked for British Intelligence, and became an international arms dealer. He was productive and clever but was outwitted by the Soviets and lured to his execution...
2026-02-1811 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Three Podcast Seven Deception and Prisons
For the Soviets and the Germans, concentration camps were instruments of terror and venues for slave labor. The camp's very existence fostered a paralyzing fear among citizens who might deviate from the state's agenda. Yet some macabre elements were concealed from the outside world. This is also true of Iran. The Germans sought to disguise extermination centers, particularly after their defeat at Stalingrad. One infamous deception was to mask the brutality at the Terezin concentration camp, which served as a way station for prominent European Jews, most of whom were sent to Auschwitz, where they were m...
2026-02-1811 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Three Podcast SixWelcome to an excerpt from Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by Mark Silinsky, published by Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. This is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter three and discusses prisons.
Imprisonment and Prisons
Iconic prisons are engines of gruesome lore about sadism, injustice, and audacious escape attempts. The Tower of London in Britain, the Bastille in France, and Alcatraz in the United States have left legacies captured in popular culture. In Russia, the Peter an...
2026-02-1707 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Three Podcast FiveShow Trials
Just as in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, there is a culture of ambient fear of arrest within all Iranian social strata today. It is hard to predict who will be arrested or killed or what the charges will be. In Germany, a passing comment could be classified as Wehrkraftzersetzung, or “subversion” or “undermining the war effort,” which was punishable by death. A generic charge brought by Soviet prosecutors was "being an enemy of the people"; the equivalent in Germany was "being an enemy of the state". From their earliest days in...
2026-02-1713 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Three Podcast Four Martyrdom
Like the Nazis and the Soviets before them, Iranian leaders have made martyrs of children and young leaders. The Germans hailed twenty-two-year-old Horst Wessel, who was killed by a communist, and immortalized him in ceremony and song as a major Nazi propaganda symbol. For the Soviets, the young hero was thirteen-year-old Pavlik Morozov, who denounced his father as an enemy of the state. After his father was executed, Pavlik was killed in a family conspiracy. In turn, Pavlik became a national hero and the subject of statuary, folk songs, and an opera. Iran, too, has its child hero...
2026-02-1709 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Three Podcast ThreeNew 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...
2026-02-1707 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Three Postcast TwoThe Directorates
As in the foundational periods of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Iranian security and intelligence services initially primarily protected the new regime. Khomeini did not call his new force Sepah, a Persian word for soldiers. Instead, he called them the Sepāh-e-pasdaran, or “army of the guardians.” They guarded the revolution. The Guards were garrisoned in a facility previously used by Savak on a street soon nicknamed “Pasdaran,” or Guards. Initially, the organization was modeled on British military intelligence services, protecting Khomeini and his entourage. Later, the Guards would deploy throughout the Middle East and other...
2026-02-1713 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire Three Chapter Three Postcast OneWelcome to an excerpt of Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. This is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter three and explores the creation of the Guards.
The real war is a cultural war. . . . There are so many television and internet networks that are busy diverting the hearts and minds of our youth away from religion, our sacred beliefs, morality, modesty, and the like. —Ali Khame...
2026-02-1713 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Three Podcast OneWelcome to an excerpt of Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. This is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter three and explores the creation of the Guards.
The real war is a cultural war. . . . There are so many television and internet networks that are busy diverting the hearts and minds of our youth away from religion, our sacred beliefs, morality, modesty, and the like. —Ali Khame...
2026-02-1706 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Two Podcast ThreeKhomeini’s Three-Phased Plan of Action
As Iran’s revolutionary leaders stepped up to fill the power vacuum left by the shah’s flight, Khomeini promised support for democracy, but it was a ruse. As in the Russian Revolution and the Nazi seizure of power, the man who would rule as Iran’s dictator for the next ten years moved quickly to consolidate control. Lenin eliminated all those he deemed threats to Bolshevism, including noncommunist reformers.
After Hitler seized total power in 1933, he immediately targeted internal enemies and built concentration camps. Khomeini, too, issued a flurry o...
2026-02-1607 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Two Podcast TwoYoung Turks and Angry Iranians
Several Western-educated Iranian economists, known as the Young Turks, advanced successful development policies in the 1960s, a period later termed the “Golden Decade.” During this period, Iran enjoyed high economic growth and low inflation. From 1960 to 1976, Iran’s national income grew at a rate unmatched worldwide. By the end of this period, however, some of these same economists warned the Shah that the economy could not absorb the volume of investment he demanded. They predicted social unrest, and their forecasts proved correct. The problem was that the Shah’s modernization program involved massive...
2026-02-1609 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter Two Podcast OneThe Guards as a New Tool of Power
“A Revolution is like Saturn; it devours its own children.” —Prussian dramatist Georg Büchner, commenting on the carnage of the French Revolution
Iran remained largely independent and ignored by the West in the aftermath of World War II, as European empires unraveled. By 1945, as the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the world’s dominant powers, Britain began to divest itself of its colonies and distant obligations, announcing plans to dismantle its military presence in the Persian Gulf and the Far East by 1971.
2026-02-1609 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Two Podcast Eight This excerpt comes from chapter two and recounts Iran’s intelligence and domestic counterintelligence efforts.
Luring Opponents to Return: “Clever, Multidimensional and Innovative Tricks”
Early Soviet and Nazi leaders sometimes pressured leading dissidents to return from abroad. One of the most successful early Soviet operations was the Trust, designed to disrupt the anti-Bolshevik White émigré community. By creating a false active opposition on Soviet territory, the Trust lured several prominent dissidents to the Soviet Union, where they were killed. One was Sigmund Georgievich Rosenblum, who took the name Reilly, was employed by British Intelligence, and became an...
2026-02-1611 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Two Podcast Seven This excerpt comes from chapter two. It compares and contrasts Iranian prisons to those of the Germans and Soviets of the 20th century.
Deception and Prisons
For the Soviets and the Germans, concentration camps were instruments of terror and venues for slave labor. The camp's very existence fostered a paralyzing fear among citizens who might deviate from the state's agenda. But some macabre elements were concealed from the eyes of the outside world. This is true with Iran as well.
The Germans made efforts to disguise extermination centers, particularly after their def...
2026-02-1611 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Two Podcast NineThis excerpt comes from chapter two and discusses the opportunities for insiders and the new royalty of the Iranian Republic.
After the Revolution
One generation after the revolution, established stakeholders had emerged in the new political system. Some of those who helped build the government and its intelligence and security services remained a tightly knit cohort. As one observer noted, “If you are an insider, you can pick any job you want. If you are an outsider, you have to wait outside the doors of government offices.”
However, many insiders fell out of favo...
2026-02-1607 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter Two Podcast SixIconic prisons are engines of gruesome lore about sadism, injustice, and audacious escape attempts. The Tower of London in Britain, the Bastille in France, and Alcatraz in the United States have left enduring legacies in popular culture. In Russia, the Peter and Paul Fortress, founded by Peter the Great, was a hotbed of political radicals and social irritants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among the more famous were Fyodor Dostoevsky, Maxim Gorky, and Leon Trotsky. When the communists established a government in Moscow, they used the Lubyanka prison to incarcerate and kill their enemies.
If...
2026-02-1611 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter One Podcast FourIdeological Divergence
While all four ideologies converge on seven points, they diverge on three issues, namely the role of religion, the distribution of wealth and property, and the nature of utopia. On the first point, communism is atheistic, and fascist ideologues tolerated Christianity out of political necessity. In Islamism and Shia revivalism, religion defines legal and social norms across all aspects of life. For example, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accorded the Twelfth Imam a special place during his weekly cabinet briefings.
Another point of divergence is the distribution of wealth and property. Communism advocates an equal...
2026-02-1611 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter One Podcast Three We now turn to two other philosophies – communism and fascism.
Communism
The second set of ideas popular in the lead-up to the Iranian Revolution was associated with communism. While some Iranians hoped to recast elements of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in a Shia mold, secular intellectuals looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration. The Communist Party of Iran (Tudeh) was founded in 1941, and a rival, the more left-wing Jangali Party, was established in 1920. Internal bickering split the Jangali movement and atomized it into small hard-left factions. It collapsed in 1921, but the Tudeh Party endured. Additionally, some...
2026-02-1615 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror - Chapter One Podcast TwoWelcome to an excerpt of Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. This is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security.
“I am Cyrus, who founded the Persian Empire and was King of Asia. Grudge
me not, therefore, this monument.” —Inscription on the tomb of Cyrus the Great
Iran sits at the strategic center of the greater Middle East. Once boasting the most powerful kingdom of its day, Iran’s influence waned over...
2026-02-1606 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Chapter One Podcast OneHassan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher, founded the Muslim Brotherhood to fill material and spiritual voids in civil society. Along with other pious Muslims, he was crestfallen at the Ottoman Caliphate's collapse in 1924. Much like Shia clerics in Persia, he saw Islam threatened by atheism, imperialism, and the widening scientific gap between the West and the Islamic East. Al-Banna was a Sunni Muslim, but he had no quarrel with the Shia, whom he regarded as fellow Muslims. Instead, he advocated a solid Shia-Sunni Islamic front against non-Muslims and particularly detested the British. Iranian Islamic revolutionaries praised the Brotherhood and mourned...
2026-02-1606 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Introduction Podcast OneIn the early 1980s, many Western observers viewed the new government as a band of overzealous reformers who would moderate their rule once their fervor subsided. However, although the wholesale killings of the early years subsided, widespread repression continues, and the Guards remain the primary instrument of that subjugation. Today, Iranians under forty-five have little memory of Iran without the Guards.
The Islamic Revolution established a new social order grounded in fundamentalist Islamic family ethics and values. In present-day Iran, there is little room for political, religious, or social deviation. A woman’s life is val...
2026-02-1609 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Introduction Podcast TwoThe Rise of the Guards
The early years of the Guards were filled with the jingoism and martial pageantry marshalled to rally support for the war against Iraq. The piety, sacrifice, and courage of the Guards and, in particular, the Basij were celebrated throughout Iran during this conflict. The Basij were initially an independent force that drew poor, often religious, and resolute young men to fight for the revolution. Accounts of pious boys charging into battlements armed with a rifle and a Koran filled classrooms and adorned the walls of buildings in all large cities. But this...
2026-02-1608 minThe Empire of Terror PodcastEmpire of Terror Introduction Podcast Three
The Father of All Bombs
Iran has become a primary threat to American interests in the greater Middle East. If armed with a nuclear arsenal, it could threaten America itself. For nearly forty years, the Guards and the MOIS have sponsored and commanded anti-Western terrorist organizations. Indeed, the Guards’ reach has expanded into the heart of the Middle East and into South America. Iran’s enemies list includes the United States and Israel, both of which Tehran threatens to annihilate. Rhetoric aside, until recently, Iran did not pose an existential threat to any Wester...
2026-02-1606 min