The IRGC is, like the SS, a multi-service force. It has its own ground force, air force, and navy. It also has a special operations and direct action arm, the Quds (or “Jerusalem”) Force. Remember when Trump ordered Qasem Soleimani assassinated in 2020? He was the head of the IRGC-QF.

The IRGC has a fifth branch: the Basij. The Basij is a paramilitary force, more of an auxiliary force for maintaining domestic control than a military force. Members of the Basij are basically volunteer thugs who maintain order, suppress protests, assault women who don’t wear their headscarves properly—that sort of thing. They’re the front-line element of the Iranian state’s apparatus of oppression.

If the IRGC is somewhat akin to what Trump would like ICE to be, then the Basij is sort of like a mash-up of the KKK, Proud Boys, and Patriot Front, mobilized and given license by the state to beat up protesters and maybe murder a few.

2/

I am not, to put it mildly, a fan of the IRGC or the Basij. These are not good actors and they do not become good by virtue of being attacked by the US and Israel. When you hear news stories about Iranians being afraid to protest the regime right now because there are plain-clothes agents on the street surveilling or intimidating people, most of those agents are probably Basij.

So I won’t lose any sleep when I hear that US and Israeli strikes are targeting Basij facilities and checkpoints. At the same time, holy shit, what an obscene disregard for the safety of the Iranian civilians near these checkpoints is on display in these videos:

https://web-cdn.bsky.app/profile/shipwreck75.bsky.social/post/3mhbbizd3622u

3/

These strikes also suggest that the US and Israel have run out of military targets they can easily strike and are now just hitting random Basij checkpoints.

Imagine a foreign power trying to take over the US or render it powerless by blowing up a handful of cops at a random sobriety checkpoint here and there, and you can get a sense of the problem of scale at work here. Iran is a big country. Its state apparatus is extensive. Killing a few Basij goons at a time is not going to materially affect the Iranian state’s ability to suppress domestic unrest, much less bring down the regime.

So if Iran can still fire ballistic missiles and attack drones at a steady rate, day after day, and the US and Israel are striking Basij checkpoints rather than ballistic missiles or launchers, it’s probably because *the US and Israel can’t find the missiles or their launchers*.

4/

That, more than anything else, is what I take away from these strikes on individual Basij checkpoints: the US and Israel have run out of things to strike that make operational sense, so now they’re just blowing things up for the sake of hitting something.

In the absence of any kind of policy goal or strategy for matching ways and means to that goal, all that’s left is the tactical and operational.

I’ve seen lots of footage of Iranian missile strikes on Israel. If Iran can still hit Israel and Israel is killing Basij, it’s because Israel can’t find the missiles before they launch.

Which also means all the claims by Trump et al to have destroyed Iran’s military capabilities are likely—no surprise here—false.

5/end

@HeavenlyPossum

I think you're overlooking an excluded middle here. Trump is lying about destroying Iran's missile / drone capacity *and* the US and Israel are planning to do what they always do, which is to destroy all civilian infrastructure.

@richpuchalsky

But they’re not.

@HeavenlyPossum

They may have been deterred from doing so by the realization that if they did so right now, Iran would strike back at desalinization plants all over the region. But they certainly were planning to do so.

@richpuchalsky

Why do you believe they were planning to destroy all civilian infrastructure?

@HeavenlyPossum

1) Because it's what they always do

2) Because they talked openly about future stages of the operation and mentioned civilian infrastructure.

3) Because it's what they are in the process of doing. For instance they've apparently destroyed 13 hospitals.

I think they've backed off to some degree while Iran is able to retaliate. If it's ever not, then scorched earth.

@HeavenlyPossum

For instance, Israel just said that it is going to eliminate any Iranian official that they can target:

https://bsky.app/profile/msjamshidi.bsky.social/post/3mhe4z5zgs22c

@richpuchalsky

I fully agree that the Israeli strategic objective appears to be the collapse of the Iranian state, probably to reduce Iran to the same condition as civil war Syria that knocks Iran out as a regional player for at least a decade.

(The US, in contrast, appears to have no strategic objective, which would require it to first have a policy that it is trying to affect.)

But that’s not the same thing as having a goal of destroying all civilian infrastructure.