The Iranian Regime - a Culture of Martyrdom & Death

By Tony Duheaume

17 November, 2016

The theme of this article is to highlight the culture of martyrdom and death that has been infused into Iranian society by the present regime, bringing to light how its fanatically loyal elite military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and its subservient Basij militia, crackdown down hard on any form of dissent, in order to keep their beloved radical clerical regime in power, enforcing its draconian laws onto its citizens at whatever cost.

  Breathtakingly despotic, the Islamic Republic of Iran was founded on extreme brutality, with major human rights issues taking place right from the start of its violent takeover, which, as the revolution wound down, began with house to house searches, extrajudicial executions in the street, the mass slaughter of thousands of inmates in its prison system, and other terrible abuses including the mass torture and murder of dissidents, which continues to this very day.

  No sooner had Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini come to power in Iran 1979, proclaiming himself Supreme Leader, he found the need for a military force that would be completely loyal to him, and would act as an elite unit free of the command of the regular army, which would protect him at all costs, and that was when he formed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

  This force would become the guardians of the revolution, preserving all of the founder’s ideals for years to come, much in the same way that Hitler had had in mind for his beloved SS, which acted as his private bodyguard, and guardians of his legendary Thousand Year Reich. 

  But not only did Khomeini get to work building up this powerful political military force, he needed to ensure that this new elitist unit would fulfil the role required of them, and so he saw to it that a “martyrdom cult” was developed within its ranks.

  Khomeini needed committed idealists, soldiers who would give their lives to protect all aspects of his revolutionary ideology, and who would sacrifice themselves without blinking an eye to further the cause of his Islamic revolution for years to come.

  Then when Ali Khamenei took over as Supreme Leader after the death of Khomeini, always one to feel paranoid about being overthrown in a second revolution, Khamenei threw pots of money at the IRGC, offering its commanders lucrative deals such as the ownership of state assets to keep them close to him.

  Just like Adolf Hitler’s elite SS battalions, the tasks of the present day Revolutionary Guards are numerous, both militarily and culturally. As with the SS in Hitler’s Germany, the Guard’s are a very active element in the country’s intelligence community, operating their own Intelligence Directorate, which keeps them well informed of any disruptive activity, and with their spies in every section of the security services, the military and political establishment, any grumblings of discontent or threats against the regime soon come to their notice.

   The tentacles of the Guard’s intelligence arm is spread right across the nation, and working alongside the Ministry of Intelligence Service – commonly known as the MOIS – both groups are responsible for monitoring the activities of all citizens. Its agents look for any sign of subversive activity amongst the general populace, while at the same time enforcing the regime’s strict Islamic codes, including the policing of appropriate clothing for women, and that of moral issues such as cracking down on homosexual activity, promiscuity, drug taking and pornography, all of which the participant can face the death penalty for.

  The mullahs have always perceived any form of reformist opposition as a threat to their grip on power, and in their terminology, anybody opposing the country’s clerical rule in any way is guilty of a crime against the state, and by committing such a crime, they are also guilty of “waging war against the government of God.”

  Although the IRGC is under the direct control of the Supreme Leader, the Guards have always had a tendency over the years not to always follow orders in matters of internal strife, especially where orders are given to crack down hard on dissenters in street protests or in public places such as universities, and that’s why the Basij militia became so useful to the leadership.

  Originally created in 1979, Khomeini had officially named his new militia, the Basij Mostazafan – or “mobilisation of the oppressed”. From that time on, they have acted as the regime’s attack dogs, and are nothing more than a suicidal band of zealots, who have never had any qualms about going against their own fellow countrymen during any form of public protest.

  If necessary, they would open fire on peaceful demonstrations with live ammunition, which was something the Guards balked at, as its commanders preferred to stay a popular force amongst the people.

   To highlight this, there was an incident in August 1994, when the Guards refused an order to open fire on protestors in Qazvin, a large town northwest of Tehran, where demonstrators were out on the streets demonstrating against living conditions, during Iran’s worsening economic crisis. With the Guards refusing to leave their barracks, not wanting to besmirch their name through having to be involved in cutting down unarmed protestors with automatic weapons, the Basij was called in to confront the crowds.

  The Basij act much like Hitler’s Storm Battalions - or Brown Shirts as they became known - who in the early days of the NAZI Party, were little more than bands of street ruffians, who had been indoctrinated to adhere to the most fanatical ideologies of the NAZI Party, and were constantly out on German streets violently beating or rounding up Jews.

  During their training, Hitler’s Brown Shirts had been brainwashed into holding fast to the fanatical beliefs of the NAZIS, and in much the same way, recruits to the Basij are whipped up into a revolutionary zeal by their commanders, who indoctrinate them with the ideology of radical Shi’ite Islam, pumping into their minds how it is their religious duty to protect the Islamic state against insurrection at all costs.

  A ruthless section of the state security machine, the Basij terrorise political opponents, and if necessary murder dissidents who fall foul of the regime, in the same way that Hitler’s Brown Shirts terrorised and murdered the Jews during the early days of the NAZI Party. In doing so, their duty is to keep control of the streets, which is a necessary element in managing a police state. Whether Shia, Sunni or any other religious persuasion, if you fall foul of the regime, you fall foul of the vicious Basij.

  Such is their fanatical devotion to Khamenei, the Basij show no mercy whatsoever towards those the regime class as dissidents, and in the case of the Qazvin protest, Basij units had killed around forty people, with the injured numbering in access of four hundred.

  The need for a fighting force like the Basij first became apparent to Khomeini at the at the end of the revolution, at a time when he felt that certain members of the Iranian armed forces were still loyal to Shah Pahlavi, and that they might conspire to overthrow him. As a result of this, Khomeini ordered that the ranks of the army be severely decimated, and due to his ongoing purges, the military became severely weakened, which turned out to be a catastrophic mistake those times of constant upheaval.

  In September 1980, at the start of the Iran/Iraq War, with Khomeini’s troops facing Saddam Hussein’s professional, well-armed military battalions, the situation looked dire. So to compensate for the weakness in the ranks of his military, the Supreme Leader needed to find a quick fix, and a suicidal band of zealots in the form of the Basij seemed the perfect answer.

  These child volunteers were much like Hitler Youth squads, which had been created by the NAZIS in the 1930s. With their brains filled with the glories of Khomeini’s recently founded Islamic Republic, their minds brimmed over with revolutionary zeal, and they were taught right from the start what an honour it was to die defending the fledgling Shia republic.

  As far as their absolute devotion to their religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini was concerned, it was proven beyond doubt during the Iran/Iraq War, when minefields along the front line were becoming a direct obstacle for advancing Iranian troops, and a swift method was needed to eradicate them.

  But just to ensure that these brainwashed youngsters would take on any suicidal task allotted to them, Khomeini imported 500,000 red plastic keys from Taiwan, to be hung round the neck of each member of the Basij, all of whom had been convinced by their commanders that these keys would unlock the gates of paradise should they die in battle.

  Then heavily indoctrinated with Khomeini’s radical ideology, into carrying out acts of insane martyrdom, they were sent in their thousands to march across minefields laid by Iraqi troops, which were hampering the advance of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and in droves these youngsters were blown to smithereens as soon as their feet came into contact with the mines, leaving a slimy mass of blood, bones and sinew coating the battlefield.

  Sporting blood-red headbands, they moved forward in human wave attacks, tramping towards enemy positions in flawlessly straight rows, marching to their deaths chanting religious anthems. The tactic was simple, as the first ranks were blown to a mash of human pulp by the powerful Iraqi mines, those following had to continue marching forward, stomping on the mutilated remains of their comrades, until they themselves reached the next line of mines, which then blew them to smithereens, and so the sequence continued until the minefield was cleared. As far as the Iranian mullah administration was concerned, the massive body count meant nothing, this was simply a cost-effective way to clear mine fields.

  So this was the birth of the Basij, a militia contingent that revels in its past glories, and thinks nothing about sacrificing life on earth for their Supreme Leader; even though suicide was against the teachings of the Koran, as in the minds of these fanatical zealots, such sacrifice would take them through an open door straight into paradise.

  While many of the abuses against civilians taking place on Iranian territory having, over the years, been coordinated between the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the vicious Basij militia, acts of terror overseas have been initiated by the Qods Force, which is an overseas arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

  Then both at home and abroad, there operates the infamous Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), a brutal force much like Hitler’s Gestapo. On home territory, operating alongside the IRGC and the Basij, the Ministry of Intelligence ensures that through the use of an army of informers - many of whom are within the ranks of the Basij itself - all dissent is quelled before it has time to get off the ground. Often working closely with the Basij, the mandate of the MOIS is to make certain the Shia revolutionary government is protected at all costs.

  To protect the Islamic Republic from outside threats, the Ministry of Intelligence is expert when it comes to tracking down expatriates who are causing dissent from foreign shores, and with the use of its well-established sleeper cell network, friendly foreign intelligence agencies, and various front organisations set up specifically to aid its spy network, it has been able to eliminate many threats, often through the use of assassination.

  Following a series of violent, sporadic murders, during a period between 1980 and 1998, which became synonymous with those dark and bloody episodes more in tune with Iran’s ancient history, which at the height of the Persian Empire, such activities were rife, and dissenters fell to both poison and the sword.

  So in the 1980s, in so-called more civilized times, the new revolutionary government began to consolidate its position, and at that time, the mass murder of innocent dissidents began in earnest, when in the region of 30,000 inmates were slaughtered within Iran’s prison system alone, and throughout the years, the slaughter has continued at both home and abroad.

  It was in the late Eighties, during the first term of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, the MOIS were said to have let loose this elite squad of infamous killers to take care of opponents of the Tehran regime living inside Iran, as well as those living in exile in Europe, in a series of assassinations that became infamously known as the Chain Murders.

  These murders were terribly brutal, designed to instil fear into the hearts of any dissidents brave enough to speak out against the regime, and some of the victims of these hit squads, died in the most barbaric of fashions, their bodies severely mutilated, women included.

  Although, over recent years, being no longer involved in this type of assassination, due to the adverse publicity they generate on foreign soil, the MOIS is still very active in other forms of undercover intelligence work, and one of the main areas it continues to concentrate on is the monitoring, infiltration and control of groups deemed a threat to the Islamic revolutionary government of Iran.

  But since that dark period of assassinations in the 1980s, the MOIS has continued to carry out or help support terrorist and military activities on foreign soil, in coordination with its sister organisations the Qods Force and Hezbollah, in which it has been heavily involved in logistics and planning.

  Over past years, operations the MOIS have said to have been involved in included the  bombing of the U.S. Beirut Embassy on April 18, 1983, the U.S. Marine and French forces barracks bombings on October 23, 1983, the hijacking of the TWA airliner on June 14, 1985, a series of fatal bombings in Paris killing 12 people in 1985-86, a series of kidnappings, tortures and murders of U.S, citizens in Lebanon during the 1980s, the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994 which killed 85 people and injured hundreds, the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia on June 25, 1996, in which a truck-bomb killed 19 U.S. servicemen and injured 498 people of various nationalities, the October 2000 attack on USS Cole by al-Qaeda, of which Iran was said to have been involved in, and more recently the October 2011 plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in a New York restaurant, as well as various other operations that have been placed at the door of Iran’s proxy Hezbollah.

  As far as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was concerned, the Iranian Islamic Revolution was just the start of a wider struggle; his true vision was to spread his own form of radical Shia doctrine across every nation in the Middle East, and eventually the globe, through the export of revolution, upheaval and terror, a struggle which still continues today under Khamenei.

  In January 1980, Khomeini made his views perfectly clear on the export of revolution, when addressing a group of Pakistani military officers, who were on a pilgrimage to Gom, he told them: “We are at war against the infidels. Take this message with you. I ask all Islamic nations, all Muslims, all Islamic armies and heads of Islamic states to join the Holy War. There are many enemies to be killed or destroyed. Jihad must triumph.”

  Right from the start, Khomeini had put together a terrorist empire, led by belligerent all-powerful mullahs, who immediately began to build-up a suicide warrior cult within the ranks of the more radical groups within its military and affiliates, both inside and outside of Iran.

  The clerical regime sees itself as the divine upholders of the Islamic faith, only Shia ideology would prevail within Iran’s borders, and eventually, if Khomeini had his way, all other religions would be wiped from the face of the earth, alongside its much hated Jewish adversary Israel.

  Included on the list of enemy States, were all countries aligned to the United States - or Great Satan as the Iranian regime preferred to call it - as well as all of the ruling monarchies of the Gulf States, which the mullahs despise with fervour.

  As far as the mullah leadership is concerned, with their cultural identity steeped in the mysticism of past Persian civilisations, it has allowed a nationalistic fervour to grip the security apparatus operating within the regime, as they crave for a return to the glory days when their beloved Persian nation controlled most of the Middle East. Such is the pride of Iran’s Persian identity; its past leaders have always refused to adopt the Arab language, in the same way as other nations had done during the Islamic conquest, and in doing so, have kept themselves isolated from other Arab nations, through choosing to create their own religious identity in the form of Shiism.

  As far as the case of this Persian identity is concerned, the regime’s leaders have jealously protected it over the years, and with their Farsi language and cultural characteristics being so precious to them, it has turned the whole topic into a racial issue.

  Within Iran’s borders, any minority groups such as the Ahwazi Arabs, whose nation was annexed by Iran and renamed Khuzestan, or the Baloch, whose country was chopped up to form Pakistan, which resulted in the West of the country being taken over by Iran, both these regions have found themselves stripped of their cultural identity and language, and forced to follow the Persian way of life.

  So as a fervently religious state, with its leadership hankering for the most violent aspects of a long-past fiercely dominant Persian empire, and with its administration made up of both religious clerics and military commanders of the fanatically loyal Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, this volatile combination of leadership has created an unhealthy culture of martyrdom and death, which the administration has worked hard to instil deeply into the minds of the population.

   Through education and manipulation by the state-owned media, the regime has tried to ensure that the nation’s mind-set is fixed on self-sacrifice, which plays into the hands of the mullah leadership, and should a full-scale war ever break out against any outside force, there would be no fear of death in combat situations amongst many of the population, no matter how vast the odds are stacked against them.

  As in the case of Iran, a vast majority of its people has been force fed the cause of martyrdom since leaving the cradle, and taught how such practice opens the door to paradise. Through these erroneous teachings, mass casualties would become accepted in any future war, just as they were during the Iran/Iraq War, when those armies of hapless teenagers were sent marching across minefields, blowing themselves to pieces to aid the forces of the IRGC advancing in their path.

  It is this martyrdom zeal that has stripped the mullah leadership of all humanity, allowing it to sanction mass hangings of dissidents, routine torture in its prison system, dozens of assassinations to be carried out at both home and abroad by its proxies, and the bombings and assassinations carried out against any country or person that dares to criticize its leadership in any shape or form.

  Then in as far as the Iranian regime’s interpretation of Shia Islam is concerned; it allows the declaration of a religious war, or a jihad, against all threats to its religious values. So whenever its clerically run revolutionary regime perceives a threat from an outside force, it has no problem striking out at that perceived threat through terrorist activity, which over the years has been conducted through an ongoing proxy war, using mainly Hezbollah as its strike force.

  So with Iran’s clerical leadership feeling that Shias are superior over all non-Shias, with the inclusion of Sunni Muslims; torturing and murdering thousands of its “inferior” opponents comes easy to them, and it has to be remembered that this mindset is still with them to this present day.