Iran’s Basij are paramilitary troops trained for crushing urban unrest that jeopardizes the regime in Tehran. They have been deployed in Damascus and are relieving the Hizballah units guarding the Shiite Syrian villages along the Lebanese border.

The Iranian government Wednesday, Oct. 3, invoked the emergency measures drawn up for the 2009 protests to deploy large Bassij militia forces in the capital and put down the first angry protests against mounting economic hardship and the plummeting rial.  Money changers and gold merchants attacked police, torched their cars and threatened a general shutdown of trading and the Bazaar. The government decided to draw the line in Tehran before the anti-government unrest spreads further.

After Cairo and Tunis, the regime in Iran fears the opposition groups to take over the annual street celebrations of the Islamic Revolution on Feb. 12, when the masses are called out to the streets. It has mobilized its legions of informers and thugs to guard against this threat.

In a well-coordinated offensive, pro-government Basijj militiamen in civilian dress hurled rocks and eggs at the Italian and French embassies in Tehran Tuesday, Feb. 9, shouting death to their respective leaders. Some say the Dutch embassy was also targeted.
debkafile's Iranian sources say more violence is ahead, designed to raise international tensions around Iran to fever pitch to deter opposition leaders from staging their planned mass ...

debkafile's Iranian sources report that the Basijj militia chiefs have a plan to seize the British embassy in Tehran. Western intelligence agencies monitoring Iran have warned London that radical groups are secretly preparing to overrun the British embassy buildings and living quarters and take the diplomats hostage, replicating the siege of the US embassy in 1979.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad favors the ...