Ayatollah Khomeini
Early during the revolution Khomeini was faced with a big dilemma. The Shah Army was still there. He could not dismantle the military as he might have needed them to operate the military machinery against Iraq. At the same time, The Army was still loyal to the Shah, so he had to create a new force to balance the Army out. That was when he ordered the recruiting of militia and combining all Moslem guerilla groups who were loyal to him, thus creating the “The Army of Revolutionary Guards.”
The members of the guard were a mixture of very religious youth who were in love with Khomeini’s brand of Islam, criminals, opportunists, psychopaths, and "city thugs”. Khomeini put the son of a street thug who had been killed by the Shah and was a follower of Khomeini with the name of Mohsen Rezai as the leader of this group.
Mehdi Rezai
With the vast amounts of money from Iranian oil, they were able to arm and train these creatures to build a force of 150,000, whose job was to protect the regime of Khomeini and his followers -- and do its dirty work. Khomeini gave them the open hand to do whatever they wanted; torture, murder, bribery, political oppression, continuous harassment of women and minorities and total annihilation of the dissident groups.
The revolutionary guards created an environment of terror by far more brutal than that of the Shah. One of the main functions of the guards was turning the society from a secular society to a religious society. They enforced strict Islamic laws in the streets and brutally crushed any opposition of any kind. Their atrocities are famous and endless. The harsh methods of revolutionary guards made them extremely unpopular and hated.
Probably their worst crimes were the massacre of teenagers who were selling opposition newspapers in the streets of Tehran during the early months after the revolution.
I remember being at the house of one of our relative’s in the afternoon when suddenly, we heard a women screaming and crying outside. After a couple of minutes my cousin came in to tell me that a neighbor lady was screaming because her two daughters were executed by the guards. The poor girls were only fourteen and fifteen years old and were selling newspapers in the streets.
This poor mother whose daughters were missing for 24 hours, had opened the daily paper to see their pictures on the front page with the news stating that they were executed for anti-government activities. She was totally beside herself, and the sight of her beating herself is imprinted in my brain.
Revolutionary Guards Outside of Iran:
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