The Basij militia: The Iranian regime’s bloody baton of suppression and terror against its people

At the start of January 2026, the Islamic regime in Iran perpetrated the largest massacre in its history, murdering over ten thousand of its own people who tried to overthrow the mullahs and return their country to freedom after 46 years. 

Spearheading the regime’s operations to terrorize and beat its populace into submission is the Basij militia, the regime’s infamous and loyal volunteer militia. 

The Basij, formally known in Persian as the Sazman-e Basij-e Mostazafin, or “Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed,” is a highly unusual organization for a modern state.  

Though not a regular military (Iran also has two of those, the army and the IRGC), nor a police force, its members are armed and trained. 

It has the specific purpose of confronting political and cultural threats to the regime, in addition to serving as brutal shock troops against protesters. 

Basij membership is reported to be massive, possibly as large as around 3 million, though more conservative estimates speak of several hundred thousand active members, who are organized in headquarters across the country. 

Despite being formally under the command of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and having a professional command staff, its membership is, in part, organized like a kind of social or religious club. Branches are found in every part of society, including schools, universities, mosques and workplaces across various sectors. 

There, they are used to constantly indoctrinate their surroundings with the regime’s propaganda, while monitoring dissent and policing morality and general behavior. 

The volunteer militia was explicitly founded to be an ideologically loyal force at the behest of the Supreme Leader. Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, established the Basij in 1979 amid talk of a “20-million-man army,” implying that every single citizen of the country should be a regime soldier. 

The militia quickly became infamous for the fanatic dedication shown by its members. Mostly drawn from the conservative, religious, and often poor Shia population that has been the base of the regime’s power, the so-called Basijis have prided themselves on their absolute loyalty to their Imam. 

They proved this during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), where they (in)famously were used as shock troops in human waves to overwhelm Iraqi positions or minefields through sheer numbers, despite poor training and equipment.  

This also included the mass use of indoctrinated child soldiers, who died in the thousands while carrying “keys to heaven” in their pockets, distributed by their officers. 

One of their most famous members was 13-year-old Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh, who was stylized as a military hero when he allegedly stopped an Iraqi military advance by jumping under a tank and detonating a grenade belt, heroically offering his life for his country. 

After a period of lesser importance, the Basij became the regime’s most crucial instrument to suppress internal unrest in the early 2000s. 

They played a crucial role in the suppression of the 2009 protests caused by the controversial election win of President Ahmadinejad. In the 2022 Mahsa Amini Protests, the Basij was reportedly responsible for most of the over 500 deaths, including 68 minors. 

Giving a preview of their gruesome activities in 2026, Basijis were accused of a variety of human rights abuses during these protests, including forced confessions through torture like sexual violence and rape, mock executions and electro shocks, as well as the purposeful blinding of protesters by targeting their eyes with pellets, teargas canisters or paintball bullets. 

Having learned from previous difficulties responding to protests, the regime has integrated the Basij as a key cog in its suppression network, commanded by the IRGC. The militia is now well organized and spread across the country, ready to pounce on any sign of revolt against the regime. 

The members are divided into three tiers, all of whom undergo rigorous religious, political, and ideological training. 

According to Iran expert Saeid Golkar, the IRGC employs thousands of “political guides” who have special training to instruct Basij members in specific areas of regime ideology, such as “political groups and ideologies in Iran, “soft war,” contemporary Iranian history, ethnic politics, and regional studies. They are responsible for justifying the national, regional, and international policies of the regime and for removing doubts with respect to these policies among Basijis.” 

Unpaid “regulars” receive basic ideological and military training but have only sporadic connections to the militia in their daily lives. 

“Active” members undergo a 45-day ideological and military training program and receive an additional salary in addition to their regular jobs, while “special” members are full-time, salaried operatives of the IRGC who serve in the Basij branch. 

Golkar estimates that there are around 800,000 active members and 200,000 special members. 

Every city is divided into “resistance areas” and then resistance zones, bases, groups and cells. Even housing areas seen as problematic can have their own dedicated Basij cells responsible for them. 

According to Kasra Aarabi and Saeid Golkar of the United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) think tank, the regime has a four-tiered system of national-security threat levels: White (normal); Yellow (abnormal); Orange (extraordinary); and Red (critical). 

The entire country is divided into 11 areas, each with around three provinces, which have an IRGC operational security-military headquarters responsible for them. When a “Red” alert is triggered, the regional HQ in effect receives ultimate authority over its area, assuming military command of all available forces, with the Basij as the spearhead. 

“Security checkpoints are immediately installed across each and every municipality, regional zone, district, and neighborhood – including in rural areas – across all Iranian provinces,” Aarabi writes on 𝕏. 

“Roadblocks manned by Basij units with batons are deployed across all main highways and squares across the municipality regions and districts by the IRGC-Basij Regional Office & Basij district offices. Armed Basij patrols are also activated across all main roads/intersections.” 

“At the neighborhood level, the Basij neighborhood offices simultaneously deploy their male and female groups to carry out street patrols across different neighborhoods. These lower-trained units often focus on identifying apartment blocks chanting slogans on rooftops.” 

“This extensive suppressive apparatus is the biggest roadblock to regime change in Iran,” Aarabi writes. 

In another report by Aarabi and Golkar, they explained the use of Basij motorbike units to disperse, intimidate, wound, and even kill protesters. 

“One person drives, while the other rides with a baton, a taser, pellet guns, or even launchers,” they write. Leaked internal documents show that their own manuals instruct them to wage “psychological warfare” by driving conspicuously slowly in formation. 

“Their main job is to scatter crowds before they grow. By weaving through alleys, flanking protest groups, and circling demonstrators, they aim to cause panic and confusion... the presence of the motorbike units is loud, aggressive, and meant to show control.” 

Despite the early lack of testimonies from inside Iran during the wave of protests in early 2026, the Basij featured prominently in the few accounts that made it out. 

Reports indicated that a large number of mosques that were attacked and burnt by protesters had been targeted for being Basij bases, and that large parts of the killed security forces belonged to the militia. 

When regime officials began acknowledging that thousands of protesters had died in mid-January of 2026, the Basij was mentioned immediately. The parliament's national security chief, Ebrahim Azizi, confirmed that protesters had been shot and killed specifically outside Basij and police bases. 

Speaking to Time Magazine after the protests in 2022, a political science student in Tehran said that “The Basij is one of the mightiest and most sophisticated creations of the Islamic regime.” 

“When you produce your army through a rock-hard ideology that’s so deeply planted in their minds, entwined in every aspect of their lives, and present in the whole of their identity, then you know that you have an invincible force – a concrete wall that encompasses their entire being that cannot ever be broken.” 

In 2026, the Basij lived up (or rather, down) to its reputation once again.