After the US and Israel attacked Iran and threatened to topple the Islamic republic, 45-year-old Mohammad decided it was his “religious duty” to back up the regime.
As Iranian soldiers fire ballistic missiles and drones while trying to avoid being killed in US and Israeli strikes, Mohammad, his wife and two children spend every evening attending large pro-regime rallies and “caravans” driving through the streets of Tehran.
By maintaining a visible presence across major cities, he said, the hardcore loyalists are assuring the security forces that no new front — be it protests, unrest by opposition groups or ethnic separatist movements — will open behind them.
“I’m not a military man standing by launchers and firing missiles, but I can tell the military forces: we are protecting the streets, so you can go and fight without concern,” Mohammad told the FT, declining to give his family name.
“We cannot let foreign countries decide our future or intervene, directly or through mercenaries, to create chaos.”
The Islamic republic has long depended for control not only on the state and military apparatus but a committed, active minority of supporters and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basij volunteer units, whose membership authorities say is in the millions.
While most Basij members are not formally on any payroll, they can be mobilised at short notice. And many who were previously unarmed now carry weapons, patrolling the streets on motorcycles at the head of the so-called caravans, displaying Iranian flags and blaring religious music as supporters like Mohammad follow in their cars.
The mobilisation reflects what the regime and its supporters see as an existential battle: not just to survive the US-Israeli onslaught, but to quash any openings for the sort of mass anti-regime demonstrations that spread across the country in January.
At least 7,000 people were killed in the ensuing crackdown, according to the US-based non-profit Human Rights Activists News Agency.
For the Iranian authorities, who put the death toll at over 3,000, recent calls by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iranians to rise up again have only strengthened their belief that those protests were the work of foreign-backed agitators.
The judiciary hanged three men this week for their involvement in the January protests, and authorities have repeatedly urged people to stay away from any demonstrations or face serious consequences.
The country’s political leaders and military commanders have instead urged their supporters to maintain their presence in the streets until the current war ends, no matter how long it takes.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker and a leading figure in the war effort, said there were three priorities for the public: “street, street, street”.
“Dear Iranian people: streets with you, [battle]fields with us,” said the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace forces, Majid Moosavi, in a post on X a week after the war began.
But for many Iranians, including some who had hoped the war might prove a catalyst for regime change, the presence of vocal, armed regime loyalists on the streets is menacing.
“These people are everywhere. Almost every night they pass by our home with cars and loudspeakers, playing religious and revolutionary music, projecting strength,” said a film director who lives in Tehran. “Who would even dare to confront them?”
One regime supporter who has joined the rallies — Fatemeh, a pseudonym — said she was “proud” that the Islamic republic is fighting the world’s top military power.
The 55-year-old goes out every evening with her son and daughter-in-law and sometimes her daughter, gathering in squares at around 8pm before joining the caravans, displaying two Iranian flags from her car windows and patrolling until midnight.
Her brother was killed during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and she later married a man who also lost a brother in the conflict. She says she fears neither her own death nor those of her children.
“My children surprise me by showing more courage than me and my husband,” she said. “This is the best death: to die for your country. This is a real victory.”
Israel has in recent days struck Basij- and police-run checkpoints on the streets of Tehran, which Netanyahu said last week would help “create optimal conditions” for people “to take to the streets”. Gholamreza Soleimani, the top commander of the Basij, was killed in an Israeli attack this week.
Some checkpoints have since been moved under bridges or inside tunnels, but there has been no apparent decline in the number of regime-linked volunteers on the streets. “This is a mentality that Americans do not understand,” one person close to the regime said. “These people are not afraid of death.”
Mostafa, a 42-year-old regime loyalist who has joined the nightly rallies, cited the 1953 US- and UK-backed coup against Iran’s democratically elected government as a reason to stay active.
“When people left the streets in 1953, it paved the way for the US to engineer a coup,” Mostafa, who has a doctorate in IT, said. “We want to ensure that external enemies cannot rely on street protests as a path to regime change … We intend to maintain this presence for as long as necessary to support our military forces.”
Neither Mostafa, Mohammad nor Fatemeh is formally part of the Basij, but said they were ready to help the network if needed.
Mohammad describes the Basij as a “potential secret army, activated as soon as needed”, who typically gather in mosques, state institutions and universities. As a well-off businessman, he was recently approached to help provide food for volunteers manning checkpoints in major cities.
Before the war, the hardline ideologues who make up many of those joining the caravans had been largely sidelined from public life, particularly as authorities eased some of their most contentious domestic policies — such as the requirement that women wear the hijab — after the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests.
But Fatemeh, Mohammad and Mostafa argued that the crowds taking to the streets were not seeking to push a return to stricter social mores, but were focused on national unity.
Mohammad, whose wife wears a full black chador, said he did not expect the Islamic republic to become more hawkish after the war, and said he thought it would continue to show leniency on some social matters.
But first, he said, it had to survive. “We have to stand now to guarantee our future,” Mohammad said. “We will stay in the streets as long as needed, even if they come to kill us.”