# Basij The Basij (*Basij-e Mostazafan*, "Mobilization of the Oppressed") is a mass volunteer paramilitary force subordinate to the [[Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]]. Founded by [[Ruhollah Khomeini]] in 1979, it functions as the regime's deepest-reaching instrument of both wartime mobilization and peacetime social control. ## War and Martyrdom The Basij earned its grim reputation during the [[Iran-Iraq War]], when it mobilized hundreds of thousands of volunteers — many of them teenagers, some children — for human-wave assaults against Iraqi positions. Basij members were sent to overwhelm defenses and, in some accounts, to clear minefields with their bodies, sent forward with plastic "keys to paradise" and the promise of martyrdom. This sanctified self-sacrifice became a foundational element of the Islamic Republic's ideology, and the war generation of Basijis became a reservoir of regime loyalists. ## Social Control and Repression In peacetime the Basij operates as a vast network of social control embedded in mosques, schools, universities, and workplaces — enforcing ideological conformity, monitoring behavior, and policing public morality (including dress and gender mixing). When the regime faces unrest, the Basij is its frontline shock troops: it led the violent suppression of the [[Iranian Green Movement]] in 2009 and the lethal crackdown on the [[Woman Life Freedom]] uprising that followed the 2022 death of [[Mahsa Amini]], beating, shooting, and detaining protesters. Its members operate with effective impunity, often in plainclothes. ## Why It Matters For the vault, the Basij is the human infrastructure of theocratic [[Authoritarianism]] — the means by which the regime projects coercive power down to the neighborhood and campus level, and the force that has repeatedly turned Iran's streets into killing grounds when its people revolt. It exemplifies how the Islamic Republic sustains itself: not through the consent it claims but through a mobilized, indoctrinated paramilitary willing to use violence against fellow citizens. *See also: [[Iranian History Hub]], [[Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]], [[Woman Life Freedom]], [[Iranian Green Movement]]*