By: Ken Robinson
I am worried about spies who kill.
Having been an 18 year old in the 1st Battalion (Ranger) 75th Infantry, I learned quickly that there is nothing more dangerous than a teenager, equipped with ethos, weapons, explosives, and the will to fight.
Iran produced such a teenager.
A boy, whose legend began during the brutal early years of the Iran–Iraq War (1980-1988), when thousands of young Iranian volunteers were thrown into a grinding conventional war against Saddam Hussein’s invading army.
This teen joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after the 1979 revolution, when he was sent to the front. Iranian accounts often describe him as volunteering for dangerous missions that went beyond ordinary soldiering: carrying water, ammunition, and messages across exposed ground to frontline fighters under artillery fire, guiding supply teams through minefields and shell craters, and retrieving wounded comrades when Iraqi bombardment made movement nearly suicidal.
Whether fully mythologized or grounded in fact, these stories portray him as a fighter who repeatedly placed himself at risk while others hesitated, earning the trust of fellow guardsmen and the attention of senior commanders.
During the war he quickly rose from leading small groups of volunteers from his home province of Kerman to commanding larger formations, eventually becoming commander of the IRGC’s 41st Tharallah Division while still in his twenties.
Within Iran’s revolutionary culture, these early battlefield exploits became the foundation of his reputation as a fearless “frontline commander,” a reputation that later helped propel him into the leadership of the IRGC’s external operations branch, the Quds Force, where he would become one of the most influential military figures in the Middle East.
His name: Qasem Soleimani
The day Qasem Soleimani was killed unfolded in the early hours of January 3, 2020, in a carefully planned U.S. military operation near Baghdad International Airport.
Soleimani, now, the longtime commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, had just arrived in Baghdad on a late-night commercial flight from Damascus. Waiting to receive him was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s powerful Popular Mobilization Forces and a close ally of Iran.
Shortly after Soleimani’s convoy left the airport area, U.S. intelligence and surveillance assets tracking his movements confirmed the vehicles’ identities and location. A U.S. armed drone, operating under orders authorized by President Donald Trump, launched several precision missiles at the convoy as it traveled along the airport access road. The strike destroyed the vehicles instantly, killing Soleimani, al-Muhandis, and several others accompanying them.
Aftermath of Assassination in Baghdad, and Funeral in Tehran
The operation came after weeks of escalating tensions between the United States and Iran following attacks on coalition facilities in Iraq and the storming of the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad by militia supporters.
U.S. officials later said intelligence indicated Soleimani was coordinating additional attacks against American personnel and diplomats in the region, which the administration cited as the rationale for the strike.
The killing of Soleimani, widely regarded inside Iran as a national hero and architect of Iran’s regional military strategy, triggered immediate geopolitical shockwaves.
Iran’s leadership declared him a martyr, millions attended funeral processions across several cities including Tehran and Kerman, and Iran responded days later by launching ballistic missiles at bases in Iraq hosting U.S. troops.
The episode marked one of the most dramatic escalations in the decades-long confrontation between Washington and Tehran and brought the region briefly to the brink of direct war.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (KIA), declared that “severe revenge” (entegham-e sakht) would be taken for Soleimani’s death. Their intended target: President Trump, the first US President willing to kill Soleimani.
In response, Iran tripled down, in its funding and statewide support for the Basij Force, and Soleimani was its national recruiting poster.
The Basij was established in 1979 by Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini envisioned it as a mass mobilization force capable of defending the revolution both internally and externally. The idea was to create a nationwide network of loyal volunteers drawn from ordinary citizens who could be rapidly organized for military or political purposes.
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers, many of them teenagers and young men, were mobilized for the front lines.
Basij units were used in extremely dangerous roles. They are alive, and well. Today, they are the Islamic Republics silent warriors, waiting to be tasked, at home, and abroad. Iran was always engineered to absorb combat pressure, rather than collapse under it.
For four decades U.S. policy has assumed that sanctions, internal unrest, and external military pressure would eventually force Tehran to compromise or fracture. Yet Iran’s leadership appears to operate under a different strategic assumption: that time itself is a weapon.
Regional diplomats and intelligence analysts say Tehran’s posture suggests the regime believes it can endure long enough for political cycles in Washington to shift, allowing the United States to declare partial success and move on. If that assumption proves correct, the confrontation unfolding now may not end in decisive change but in another chapter of strategic stalemate.
A System Built for Strategic Patience
Iran’s governing structure is unusually resilient because power is layered across overlapping institutions. The Supreme Leader sits atop a system that combines clerical authority, intelligence services, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and a network of economic foundations known as bonyads that control major segments of the economy.
These institutions reinforce one another:
The IRGC protects the clerical system.
The intelligence services police internal dissent.
Economic networks finance both.
The result is a political architecture designed less like a conventional state and more like a security structure fused with a revolutionary ideology.
Intelligence Assessments:
Weak but Stable
Current open source reporting suggests the regime is strained but not near collapse. Analysts tracking internal developments note that protest movements have not yet translated into a unified uprising capable of fracturing Iran’s coercive institutions.
Western intelligence assessments historically conclude that authoritarian systems rarely collapse because populations are unhappy. They collapse when the security apparatus fractures.
There is little evidence that Iran’s core enforcement institutions—the IRGC, Basij militia, and intelligence services—are approaching that threshold. Tehran’s Strategic Calculation About Washington Iranian leadership appears to believe time favors them.
Diplomats and analysts note Tehran often assumes American administrations face domestic political timelines that Iran does not.
The regime’s doctrine of “strategic patience” was forged during the Iran‑Iraq War and refined through decades of sanctions and covert conflict. From Tehran’s perspective, endurance itself becomes a strategic weapon.
The Basij: the “True Believers”
The regime’s ultimate insurance policy lies in ideological mobilization. The Basij militia functions as a hybrid organization: neighborhood surveillance network, ideological movement, and rapid‑response force against domestic unrest. Its recruitment campaigns often focus heavily on youth.
The organization draws historical legitimacy from the Iran‑Iraq War, where teens like Solemani, motivated by religious sacrifice—are celebrated as defenders of the revolution.
Why Protests Alone May Not Be Enough
Iran continues to experience waves of protest driven by inflation, unemployment, and anger at political repression. But protest movements face a structural challenge.
The regime has spent decades building layered internal control systems that allow it to suppress unrest even when large portions of the population oppose it.
The Strategic Risk Ahead
The danger now may lie in mutual miscalculation. Washington may underestimate the resilience of Iran’s internal security architecture, and its strategic reach into the heartland of America.
Tehran may underestimate the cumulative impact of sustained economic and military pressure. Both sides appear convinced time favors them. History suggests such confrontations rarely end quietly.
Will has been―and always will be―the basis for succeeding in any conflict or competition
Excellent discussion of active agents, abroad. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/will-iran-turn-terrorism