The Basij, known as the so-called “Mobilization Resistance Force,” is a subdivision of the terrorist-designated Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and the main force used in suppressing protests and imposing crackdown measures on the Iranian people.

Basij is one of the five forces of the IRGC. The four other branches are the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, and the Quds Force. Basij is one of the most important instruments of repression of the Iranian mullahs’ regime. Its dimension has spread to all political, social, cultural, strata of the society.

Founding of Basij
On November 25, 1979 the Basij was established based on orders from regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini and tasked to confront the growing support of the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). It was officially registered following the approval of the Majlis (parliament) in 1980.

Basij played a key role in sending many schoolboys to the frontlines during the bloody Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. According to regime sources, more than 36,000 young students were killed during the eight-year war. These teenagers were used to “clear minefields” with promises that they would go to heaven.

In fact, having a single military force, the artesh (army), should be enough for a country, but in Iran, in addition to the army, the regime created the IRGC and the Basij as its own military force with the aim of domestic suppression and export of terrorism abroad.

Following the Iran-Iraq war, Basij launched its suppressive activities in the name of “Promoting Virtue and Forbidding Vice,” an initiative used to suppress and harass youths in the streets.

In 1999, the Basij was used to suppress the Tehran University students uprising on July 9. The Basij surrounded the university’s dormitory and attacked students with teargas, clubs, and firearms. Some students were thrown from rooftops. Three students were killed during the Basij attack on Tehran University campus, more than 1,000 were injured, and around 1,000 others were arrested.

In the beginning of the year 2000, the IRGC used the Basij to suppress protests in various cities such as Eslamshahr and Mashhad. At the time, Hossein Ta’eb, the current head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, oversaw the crackdown operations.

In 2008 Basij reorganized its ranks and files to confront public protests more effectively. Basij established an independent command post in every province and during this period its role in repression became more prominent. Former IRGC chief Mohammad Ali Jafari said that the Basij’s role is important to confront popular protests, and internal economic, political, and external threats.

“We assign the task of fighting the soft threat to the popular Basij, the semi-soft threats to the military Basij units and the hard threats to the IRGC Ground Forces and military Basij units,” Jafari said.

Following the post-election nationwide protests in 2009, the regime’s Supreme National Council handed over the security of Tehran (from June 15 to August 16) to the Sarrallah Basij Base and its other sub-entities in the Mohammad Rasoul Allah Basij base.

In 2010 Ezattollah Zarghami, then head of state Radio and Television, acknowledged the Basij’s role in suppressing the 2009 protests. “The Basij forces had to fight back with clubs and sticks,” he explained. Following the deadly crackdown on 2009 protesters, Khamenei upgraded the Basij from the “Mobilization Resistance Force” to the “Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed” on October 3, 2009, and appointed Mohammad Reza Naqdi as its chief.

The Basij’s Imam Ali, Imam Hossein, and Beit-ol-Moqaddas battalions and 22 other Basij branches were established during this period. Following the Basij’s role in suppressing the 2009 protests, Amnesty International issued a statement calling on the regime to stop using Basij units in the use of force against protesters in Iran.

Basij and social media crackdown
In 2008, the regime also used Basij forces to suppress dissidents on social media platforms. The creation of tens of thousands of blogs in over 10,000 Basij bases was the start of this project. Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, then deputy judiciary chief, said in 2016 that “around 18,000 individuals worked on the internet to hand obtain information and deliver them to intelligence, security and judicial institutions.”

Following the 2009 protests, the Basij also played a vast role in suppressing dissidents and ordinary Iranian citizens. Among them was the murder of Ms. Zahra Bani Yaghoub who was held in detention since 2007 in a Basij detention center.

During the 2017 and 2018 nationwide protests, Basij was the regime’s main suppressing arm. Also, during the November 2019 nationwide protests that erupted following a major gasoline price hike, Basij and IRGC forces opened fire on protesters and gunned down more than 1,500 protesters. Khamenei later hailed Basij’s intervention. The Basij chief said at the time that his forces were present everywhere needed by the police to suppress protesters. As many regime officials have acknowledged, the Basij’s main mission is to maintain the regime’s security in the streets.

A Royal Air Force Reaper drone strike has helped defend Iraqi security forces under threat from Daesh terrorists in Iraq, like reported by forces.net.

Following an attack in the west of Baghdad on Iraqi troops, who the UK has trained across the Middle Eastern country, coalition support was deployed in Anbar province on 6 October.

A coalition air strike was then launched against the so-called Islamic State members, which official sources say killed half of the small militant group.

An RAF Reaper on daily armed reconnaissance patrol was then called in to locate and eliminate the remaining threat to the Iraqi forces.

The Ministry of Defence says there was no clear potential for collateral damage to civilians or friendly forces, before the Reaper launched a GBU-12 guided bomb against the IS militants.

Israeli soldiers destroyed two Syrian military posts in the demilitarized zone separating the two countries, in a warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose forces are encroaching on the Golan Heights, according to a television report on Tuesday, like reported by toi.com..

The covert nighttime operation last week saw special forces from the Nahal and Yahalom units cross into Syrian territory and destroy the two military positions on the Golan Heights, before slipping back into Israel undetected, Channel 12 reported.

The raid came in response to the Syrian military’s growing presence in the buffer zone, in violation of international agreements, the report said.

“You have to come to an operation like this very focused,” said Capt. Michal Zilberg, a company commander in the Granite Battalion of the Nahal Brigade. “The moment you cross [the border], your pulse quickens slightly. You are facing the enemy. You must understand that we were like 500 meters from a manned position.”

The army said it would continue to operate to prevent Assad’s forces, which are allied with Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group, from bolstering its military presence on Israel’s doorstep.

“We are familiar with the cooperation between the Syrian army and Hezbollah, and any military entrenchment by the [Syrian army] has the potential to be a dual entrenchment,” said Lt. Col. Tal Goritsky, commander of the Granite Battalion of the Nahal Brigade. “We won’t allow the south of Syria to become the south of Lebanon.”

Israel has launched hundreds of strikes in Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011. It has targeted government troops, allied Iranian forces, and fighters from the Lebanese Shiite terror group, Hezbollah.

It rarely confirms details of its operations in the country, but says Iran’s presence in support of Assad and Hezbollah is a threat and that it will continue its strikes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has obtained a video footage showing a Muslim scholar, belong to al-Sheikh Hadid’s Foundation of Endowments and Fatwa in the areas held by Turkish-backed factions in the countryside of Aleppo, considering the fighting in Azerbaijan a jihad (collective duty in Islam) and fighting against the “Crusaders”, encouraging fighting them.

The Sheikh added that the Muslim scholars have issued a fatwa prohibiting fighting outside Syria, considering this fleeing the fight (individual duty in Islam), which is the fighting in Syria against regime forces.

Sheikh stressed that the battle in Libya and Azerbaijan is a “battle of religion” and is no different than the Levant battle.

The Sheikh said that the people of Azerbaijan had followed the “Shiism” by force, while half of them are “Sunnis” and must be supported, asking everyone to rally around the “scholars” to reveal the truth.

On October 2, the Syrian Islamic Council issued a statement to fighters on the frontlines with regime forces and pro-regime militiamen.

The Council stressed the consequences of leaving frontlines with the regime forces and moving away to another place to fight in order to seek financial gain, explaining that the preference to fight is for the nearest and refusing to leave the country and fight in far away places.

This comes days after large batches of Turkish-backed factions arrived in Azerbaijan to support Azeri forces in their war against the state of Armenia in the disputed territory.

Reliable sources have informed the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that large batches of Syrian fighters were preparing to be transferred to Azerbaijan by Turkish security companies.

More than 90,000 people have been displaced in Yemen’s flashpoint Marib province since January due to intense fighting between the government and the Houthi rebels, the UN said on Tuesday, like reported by jordantimes.com.

The Iran-backed Houthis have long held the capital Sanaa which lies just 120 kilometres away and are mounting a fierce campaign to take the oil-rich province — the government’s last northern stronghold.

The escalation in fighting has pushed more and more families from their homes, and is now threatening 140 camps currently operating in the province.

After years of conflict, some sources put the number of displaced in Marib at 1 million.

“Deadly fighting now is entering its 10th month in northeast Yemen, where more than 90,000 people have been displaced to and within Marib governorate since January,” the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said in a statement.

“That’s over half of all conflict-related displacement in Yemen this year. The situation is about to get worse.”

Christa Rottensteiner, Yemen chief of mission for the IOM, said the UN agency was “hugely concerned” as the fighting drew nearer to areas heavily populated with civilians.

“We hope that a peaceful resolution can be found soon to prevent a massive displacement crisis: hundreds of thousands of people could be forced to flee, many of whom would be running from this conflict for the second, third or even forth time,” she said.

Until early 2020, Marib city was spared the worst of the conflict, due to its strategically important oil and gas reserves, and also because of its location near the border of regional power Saudi Arabia.

It became a sanctuary for many in the early years of the five-year war, taking in those hoping for a new start, but that relative stability is gone and residents are in the line of fire as the two sides battle for control.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis, mostly civilians, have been killed and some 3.3 million people displaced in what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Rottensteiner warned that if there is no resolution, “more areas would become unreachable for humanitarian organisations, meaning vulnerable communities would be left without even the most basic support”.

A total of 13 people were killed and 53 others were injured as a result of a car bomb blast in Syria’s northwestern province of Aleppo, a local source told Sputnik.

“A truck bomb explosion killed 13 people and injured 53 others in the city of Al-Bab in the Aleppo countryside in northern Syria,” the source said.

Earlier in the day, the state-run SANA news agency reported that dozens of civilians were killed and injured in the blast, which occurred on the territory controlled by Turkish-backed armed groups.

The intensification of the military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in recent days has overshadowed what may prove to be an equally, if not more, fateful shift in the Caucasus: the expansion of Russian and Iranian military-to-military ties, involving not only joint maneuvers in the Caspian Sea and the Gulf, but also Tehran’s offer to Moscow to use three naval bases on its Gulf coast, like reported by eurasiareview.com.

Many Iranian commentators and some in Moscow now are even speaking about the creation of “a Russian-Iranian military alliance” that will allow the two countries to oppose the United States’ presence in the Gulf and threaten the vital oil shipping lanes that the US has helped keep open.

Russia and Iran have been talking about expanding such ties for several years. But in the last several weeks, their cooperation—which Tehran has celebrated in Iranian media but which Moscow has, until now, understated—appears to have assumed a more concrete form. At least in part, this is because the United Nations’ restrictions on Iran’s importation of weapons from foreign countries, including Russia, will expire in mid-October. Both governments hope that Russia will then be in a position to sell much-needed military systems to the Iranians without inviting further sanctions (Zavtra.ru, September 28).

Talks between Moscow and Tehran about expanding military cooperation have been going on since the summer of 2019. At that time, the two sides reportedly signed an agreement to promote such ties (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, July 30, 2019), an accord that Tehran-based outlets boasted about even as Moscow officially kept silent. Then, in August 2020, a large Iranian military delegation came to Moscow to prepare for Iranian participation in Russia’s Kavkaz (Caucasus) 2020 military exercises and to discuss further steps toward realizing a military alliance, according to independent Moscow military commentator Konstantin Dushenov. In a recent article, he adds that the two sides agreed to conduct regular naval exercises—not only in the landlocked Caspian Sea but also in the Gulf and its Strait of Hormuz (Zavtra.ru, September 28; Kaspiiskii Vestnik, September 21).

Russian as well as Iranian media outlets have stressed that the United States is alarmed by the prospect of such cooperation, citing an article in the US publication Military Watch (Military Watch, September 22). Washington does not want Iran to modernize its arsenal by purchasing Russian weapons, something that now seems likely unless Moscow unexpectedly changes course. But the US and the West will surely be even more alarmed if Iran’s reported offer of three naval bases for Russian use—Chabahar, Bender-Abbas, and Bender-Busher—is acted upon.

Russian officials have not yet said whether Moscow will accept the offer, but independent security analysts like Sergey Ishchenko are confident that the Russian navy will do so and proceed, employing “hybrid”-like means, to transform a Russian presence at these three Iranian facilities into something more, thus establishing new Russian naval bases abroad just as it did in the case of Syria earlier (Svobodnaya Pressa, September 25). That may be more problematic than Ishchenko thinks given that the Iranian constitution bans foreign bases on the country’s territory and that Iranian society is notoriously suspicious of having any foreign forces on Iran’s soil. Yet Tehran’s offer simultaneously suggests how difficult a situation militarily Iran now finds itself in and gives Russia, working with the Iranian navy or independently, a chance to dramatically expand its ability to project forces into the Gulf and beyond.

The Svobodnaya Pressa writer adds, however, that the prospect of Russian-Iranian cooperation, not only in the landlocked Caspian but in the Gulf, has already sparked fears among Washington officials about the future, as could be seen by what he described as panic following an Iranian drone attack on US naval vessels there last week. He suggests that Tehran may have been emboldened because it has Russia at its back; this cooperation thus opens the way, in Ishchenko’s words, “to drive the US out of the Persian Gulf.” Additionally, he quotes Iranian Admiral Hosseyn Hanzadi as saying that “from now on, Moscow and Tehran will regularly conduct joint maneuvers” not only on the Caspian but in the Gulf, something that will complicate any US response. It is one thing for the United States to respond to any Iranian mischief there, and quite another to respond to something Russia is either doing behind Iranian cover or, eventually, boldly on its own.

All this is happening while the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict continues in its latest “hot” phase, but it may not be unrelated to that development. Because Tehran wants Russian naval cooperation so badly, Moscow could be in a position to insist that Iran restrain itself from becoming involved in any way in the conflict between the Islamic Republic’s two northern neighbors, thus giving the Russians greater leverage there. That could help limit the conflict between Yerevan and Baku, but only at the price of opening the way to a dramatic expansion in Russia’s military presence beyond its borders against the West.

A captured gang of arms smugglers has revealed how Iran supplies weapons to Houthi militias in Yemen through a base in Somalia, like reported by arabnews.com.

The Houthis exploit poverty in Yemen to recruit fishermen as weapons smugglers, and send fighters to Iran for military training under cover of “humanitarian” flights from Yemen to Oman, the gang said.

The four smugglers have been interrogated since May, when they were arrested with a cache of weapons in Bab Al-Mandab, the strategic strait joining the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

In video footage broadcast on Yemeni TV, gang leader Alwan Fotaini, a fisherman from Hodeidah, admits he was recruited by the Houthis in 2015. His recruiter, a smuggler called Ahmed Halas, told him he and other fishermen would be based in the Somali coastal city of Berbera, from where they would transport weapons and fuel to the Houthis.

In late 2015, Fotaini traveled to Sanaa and met a Houthi smuggler called Ibrahim Hassam Halwan, known as Abu Khalel, who would be his contact in Iran.

Pretending to be relatives of wounded fighters, Fotaini, Abu Khalel, and another smuggler called Najeeb Suleiman boarded a humanitarian flight to Oman, and then flew to Iran. They were taken to the port city of Bandar Abbas, where they received training on using GPS, camouflage, steering vessels and maintaining engines.

“We stayed in Bandar Abbas for a month as they were preparing an arms shipment that we would be transporting to Yemen,” Fotaini said.

On Fotaini’s first smuggling mission, his job was to act as a decoy for another boat carrying Iranian weapons to the Houthis. “The plan was for us to call the other boat to change course if anyone intercepted our boat,” he said.

He was then sent to Mahra in Yemen to await new arms shipments. The Houthis sent him data for a location at sea, where he and other smugglers met Abu Khalel with a boat laden with weapons from Iran, which were delivered to the Houthis.

Security analyst Dr. Theodore Karasik said long-standing trade ties between Yemen and Somalia made arms smuggling difficult to stop. “This is a complex network that requires constant monitoring, hence the focus on maritime security,” Karasik, a senior adviser to Gulf State Analytics in Washington, DC, told Arab News.

“The smuggling routes are along traditional lines of communication that intermix with other maritime commerce. The temptation to look the other way is sometimes strong, so sharp attention is required to break these chains.”

Iraq’s intelligence service arrested on Thursday a leader of ISIS in Saladin Governorate, like reported by shafaq.com.

“Saladin Intelligence Directorate, in conjunction with Al- Sulaymaniyah security forces arrested a terrorist in the outskirts of Chamchamal town.” the Service said in a statement.

The statement added that the detainee, known as “Abu Najah”, admitted of conducting more than 22 terrorist operations against civilians and security forces.

Yesterday, the Iraqi security forces with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) launched an inspection operation in Wadi Tharthar and arrested three of ISIS.

Iranian militias on Tuesday have killed 12 shepherds in the Syrian desert east of Hama province, monitoring group and activists said according to zamanalwsl.net.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that 12 civilians were killed and 4 others were missing in the attack in the eastern countryside of Hama.

The Observatory sources have reported that the Iranian-backed militias stationed in Al-Fasedah area in south-eastern Al-Sa’an in Hama desert, opened machinegun fire on civilians shepherding sheep in the area.