The Reign of Hard-line Students in Iran's Universities

In the summer of 2009, the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i was rocked by demonstrations throughout the major cities of Iran as people from all walks of life protested the fraudulent results that had reelected the ayatollah's ally, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as president. In scenes that transfixed viewers from across the world, the "Green Movement" publicly and loudly protested the voting scam and then the clerical regime itself. But no sooner had the protesters begun to mobilize popular support for ending the 30-year mullahcracy when the regime's shock troops, the Nirou-ye Moqavemat-e Basij' (Mobilization Resistance Force) and its cadet branch, the Student Basij Organization (SBO) sprang into action, suppressing the uprising. While much has been written about the Basij,1 its relationship to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC),2 and the two groups' roles in governing Iran and in squelching resistance, less is known about the younger, student branch. In fact, the student branch's importance is growing, both as a tool used by the regime to help in the suppression of dissident students and professors and perhaps more importantly as an ideological "school," grooming future mid- and upper-level managers of the regime's apparatus. With more and more of the Iranian government in the hands of former IRGC and Basij members, the student movement that helps entrench the ruling clerical establishment in power warrants further study. ESTABLISHING THE SBO Despite the fact that universities had been purged of opponents and dissident elements before the Iran- Iraq war (1 980-88), Ayatollah Khomeini's regime was too preoccupied with other concerns during the fighting to trouble itself with them. Shortly after the ceasefire imposed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 598, Khomeini delivered a speech (November 1988) advocating a greater Basij presence in Iranian universities: Today, one of the most important organizations is student and Islamic scholars Basij. Seminary and university students are required to do their best to defend Islam and the Islamic Revolution in scientific centers. My Basij children must guard the unchangeable principle of independence from the East and the West in these two centers ... The Revolution's children are required to prevent U.S. and [former] Soviet mercenaries from penetrating those sensitive places.3 When Khomeini died in 1989, the idea of creating the SBO briefly languished, only to be revived shortly thereafter in November of that year, after the accession of Grand Ayatollah Khamene'i as supreme leader. Initially Khamene'i declared: I agree with the SBO and believe that it is necessary, but it must be noted that only university students shall be allowed to get involved in it. The armed forces shall by no means be allowed to enter universities with the purpose of establishing the SBO and/or running it.4 Thus the regular armed services, whose officers may not have been sufficiently ideologically "pure" for the task were kept away from what was to become a student paramilitary organization. Instead the General Staff of the Armed Forces established a center for university Basij with a directive on November 25, 1989, assigning the IRGC responsibility for its execution. The SBO was intended both to recruit students for the Basij and to strengthen the Basij ideological-political capabilities.5 In 1990, the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution reconfirmed the central IRGCs responsibility for the SBO. Tehran University's Basij was established as the first bureau of the organization on January 3, 1990, and it soon assumed responsibility for establishing Basij offices at other universities. War veterans and Basij forces who were already studying at universities welcomed the establishment and inauguration of the bureaus and most of them enrolled in the bureaus. However, some groups opposed the establishment of these SBO cells. Dissident groups such as the Office for Consolidating Unity (Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat) and national-religious groups argued that the SBO was not an independent student organization but rather a governmental institution with a somewhat murky legal status. …