Basijis trying to attack Montazeri’s home in Qom.

Many plain clothed Basijis were seen across the city of Tehran on June 12th, no doubt, to once again “pounce” on anyone attempting to gather in one place.

…Here are a few of the Basij jokes that are making the rounds:

A Basij member is asked: “Who is God? He responds: “The representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader in heaven.”

A Basij member is taking part in a Koran reading contest. When he gets to the sura (a chapter of the Koran) of “bani Israel” (the children of Israel), he quits. (The joke refers to the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not recognize Israel.)

A Basij member is asked what will happen when the hidden Imam reappears (a messianic figure in Shi’ite doctrine.) He responds: “All will do well, people will care about each other, the killings will end, it will be like the time of the Shah.” (Many Iranians are nostalgic about the era of the Shah and the era before the 1979 revolution.)

How do you torture a Basij member? You tie him down and tell him they’re distributing Sandis (a juice brand) over there. (Food and drinks, including Sandis juices, were reportedly distributed at some progovernment demonstrations, prompting some oppositionists to say participants only came for the refreshments.)

– Golnaz Esfandiari

Go to Radio Free Europe.

Shortly before his death last December, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the opposition’s spiritual leader, excoriated the Basij. “Why do you beat people?” he demanded. “Because they do not accept what you say? Basij was founded to act within the path of God, not Satan. Isn’t it unfortunate to go to hell for the benefit of others?”

At opposition protests, the militiamen are taunted with the chant: “Cannon, tanks and Basijis no longer have an effect.”

The Basij’s fall from grace, in the eyes of many Iranians, began when the war with Iraq ended in 1988. Its members were given a new role as moral vigilantes fronting the drive against liberal tendencies at home – such as women flouting the official dress code.

Then, during the 1997 to 2005 reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami they served as shock troops breaking up pro-reform gatherings and student protests.
The Basij’s power grew rapidly after Mr Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guard, was elected president in 2005.

Revolutionary Guard and Basij commanders ordered their foot soldiers to vote for him and he rewarded the affiliated forces generously, enmeshing them deeply in Iran’s political and economic structures. Go to original article.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that Iran either resumed work on making a nuclear warhead — or had never stopped, as the U.S. concluded in 2003.

Citing intelligence from the U.S., Israel and other countries, the U.N. agency said the new information “raises concerns.”

France and Germany have threatened new sanctions against Iran, while the Islamic Republic said that the report “verified the peaceful, non-military nature” of its nuclear activities.

In recent months, Iran has been strongly criticized for its growing crackdown on dissent. Among those in the forefront of repression are the Basij paramilitary forces known for their brutal tactics.

For more on where Iran is headed, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Karim Sadjadpour, a leading researcher on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Go to WorldFocus.

IND: An overview of the Basij forces.

In the months since Iran’s contested June 2009 presidential election, the Basij Resistance Force has emerged as one of the regime’s main pillars of support against the democracy movement. In the long term, however, it is uncertain whether the militia is capable of prevailing in a prolonged fight against a persistent opposition.

Rather than having independent bases, the Basij is physically organized at mosques, government administrative offices, factories, and educational institutions. This and other factors make it impossible to establish precisely how many members the Basij has. Two of the militia’s core components are the so-called “Ashura Brigades” for male members and “al-Zahra Brigades” for female members, established around 1992-1993 to suppress urban uprisings. According to one account, there are 2,500 such brigades with 300-350 armed members each. It is even more difficult to determine how many members joined the Basij for ideological reasons and how many joined for opportunistic reasons — the latter are much more likely to defect.

There are signs that the regime leadership has not been particularly happy with the Basij’s performance. On October 2, Hojjat al-Eslam Hossein Taeb was removed as Basij chief, and on October 5, the militia was formally integrated within the framework of the IRGC Ground Forces, with Brig. Gen. Muhammad Naghdi as the new chief.

Implications

A weak Basij will be a serious problem if the Iranian regime becomes embattled. The regular military would not be able to pick up the slack: besides being politically noninterventionist, it is based in garrisons along the country’s international borders, far from major urban centers. Meanwhile, the Law Enforcement Forces have given a mixed performance in street battles with protesters, and the so-called “pressure groups” (e.g., the Ansar-e Hizballah vigilante organization) are too undisciplined for concerted action. Theoretically, the IRGC could serve as the regime’s backbone at a time of need, but many of its 125,000 enlisted men may be conscripts, raising questions about how they would act if sent on the streets. The last time regular IRGC personnel were ordered to move against demonstrators was in Qazvin in 1994; the unit in question refused to go.

Go to Washington Institute.

In his first public comments since protests last month that coincided with a major religious holiday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a rare attempt at easing tensions. Two days after gunmen with suspected ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard allegedly opened fire on the car of opposition figure Mehdi Karroubi, Khamenei urged all to abide by the law.

“Relevant bodies should fully respect the law in dealing with the riots and the ongoing events,” he told clergy and seminary students bused in to Tehran from the shrine city of Qom for an annual political commemoration.

“Those without any legal duty and obligations should not meddle with these affairs,” he said. “Everyone should hold back from arbitrary acts and everything should go within the framework of the law.”

But Brig. Gen. Mohammad-Reza Naghdi, the head of the Basiji militia, warned that many people across the country were ready to carry out their duties against what he called the desecraters of religious holidays. Go to LA Times.

People have cornered these security forces. People ask them ‘why do you do this to your people?’ and the riot guards ask for forgiveness, ‘Bebakhshid’ they can be heard to say.  ‘You are Yazid’s – the Khalif against whom the Ashura uprising took place -forces’, the woman shouts at them. One of the protesters then reassures them that they will not be beaten up, all they have to do is say Khameneii is a bastard. The woman can then be heard saying ‘All you can do is kill your people is it?’ and again they plead saying ‘Please We are not killers’.  The sooner they join the people, the sooner they will redeem themselves with the people of Iran.

IND:  This is the video of the pictures we posted yesterday.  It’s a must see.  We came across it thanks to a reader (AH).  This video shows the events leading up to the guards begging for forgiveness.

That seems to be what is happening in this clip. My previous interpretation has been challenged by several readers. Check out the 3 minute mark and you’ll see a man in a face-mask, as many baseej are now wearing, raise his riot police helmet in the air and join the crowd to great cries of excitement. In these scenes of mayhem, interpretation is hard and it may be that this is a protestor who has grabbed a baseej helmet and is brandishing it as a trophy, as I first guessed.

But the mask suggests a more pivotal moment. Before the people were wearing them; now the brownshirts are. That, also, as a reader writes, seems like a critical sign:

I’m just really struck by the fact that so few of these folks have masks on today. In June, half of the people were hiding their faces — this Ashura, not so much. Between that and the fact that they’re calling Khameini “Yazid”?

Something very real has changed in the last six months. Go to Atlantic.

On Wednesday, Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast an interview with a man who said he helped rig Iran’s June 12 presidential election, and repress the protests after it, as a member of the regime’s feared Basij militia.

According to Lindsey Hilsum, the Channel 4 international news editor who conducted the interview, the “broken man,” who would not allow his name or face to be broadcast in the report embedded below, is now seeking asylum in Britain and has said he is ashamed and conscience-stricken over what he did and witnessed. Go to NY Times.

IND:  Thanks to a reader’s tip (AH), we came across this fantastic piece.  This is how this regime will crumble – with disillusionment of its most die-hard supporters. Make sure to watch the video too.

“I’ve lost my world and I’ve lost my religion” – the words of a former Iranian Basij militia member who says he witnessed killings and tried to stop rapes during the uprising that followed the disputed Presidential election in June.

After months of stories by witnesses and victims, we are now getting a picture of what went on by a man who claims he was part of the group ordered to carry out attacks.

He is now seeking refuge in the UK and has spoken exclusively to Channel 4 News about the orders the Basij were given to ensure President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election.

“In truth the orders didn’t come after the election. The orders for all that you witnessed came before the election.

“We knew what we had to do but nothing prepared us for what we saw. There were severe clashes in the first few days, and so new orders were given for forthcoming days.”

“We are a prominent religious family – always there on the frontline, always with memories of war, frontline and revolution. Since these events I keep thinking, who is right?”

…”When I came back I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I never thought. It was unbelievable. The level of clashes was severe.

“This was unprecedented. I had witnessed attacks before but never at this level. People wouldn’t stay back, they couldn’t be suppressed and we were really in trouble.

“The clashes were very heavy. The forces were seriously involved and the people wouldn’t give in or retreat in any way. There was no end in sight.

“They would be dispersed then gather again and come back. They were standing up to us.

“I wasn’t one of the ordinary forces to have to involve myself in the situation. I could have, but I also had the choice not to.

“We were told that there would be new orders for the following days. The order came to attack everyone without restraint or mercy regardless of age. Anyone who was in disagreement.

“It was made clear, there was to be no difference between child or adult, men and women. Proper attack, without warning, or any discussion.

“We really saw ourselves as upstanding and separate from others. We really believed that what we did was correct, that we were serving the people, that we were serving God and that our mission was nothing but worshipping God.

“But now I am ashamed in front of people, even say that I was mistaken, and I am ashamed in front of my religion. I committed crimes, knowingly and unknowingly.

“Now I’m left with my conscience punishing me for what I did.

“I hope that God and people forgive me.” Go to original article.

These men belong to the Bassidj [Basij], the voluntary paramilitary force formed in the early days of the Iran-Iraq war, who now serve as the plainclothes foot soldiers of the Islamic Republic. The militia was largely behind the brutal crackdown on protesters during Iran’s recent election fallout. Filmmaker Mehran Tamadon spent three years immersed in their world. Without hiding his liberal secular views, Tamadon sought to understand their convictions and engage in a dialogue. Go to Tehran Bureau.