The wicked leader of the bassiji who turns a blind eye to reality

Among the circle of veterans who have been steering the fortunes of the Islamic Republic since 28 February, the profile of the head of the Basij militia, Hossein Taeb, is one of the most enigmatic. Regarded by some as the quintessential insider, and by others as a master manipulator who acts as a kingmaker, what is certain is that in a world populated by opportunists – pseudo-hawks, pseudo-doves and those who switch between pragmatism from one day to the next – Taeb has never wavered from the unyielding principles of his early days, which is why, at present, this sixty-year-old man with a white turban and the grim countenance of an old-school revolutionary embodies, better than anyone else, the ambitions, rigidity and limitations of the regime’s most ideological faction.

What do the die-hard ultra-conservatives dream of – those who despise the West, crave war and refuse to yield to the cultural tsunami that is revolutionising Iranian society? To understand this, one need only listen to Taeb, the ‘chief overseer’ – that is, the man tasked with spreading the ethos of the ‘good Bassiji’ in schools, universities and public squares, thanks to the astonishing resources made available by new technologies. So here he is, the former head of the Pasdaran’s intelligence service, suddenly everywhere, reiterating that the defence of Iran’s strategic assets – including, needless to say, the Strait of Hormuz – will be ‘resolute’; here he is reassuring his fellow citizens that ‘the Americans are preparing to leave the Middle East in defeat’; and finally, here he is as the undisputed protagonist of the summer’s most mysterious intrigues, such as the one outlined in a New York Times behind-the-scenes report on 13 September, in which Taeb is portrayed as the doyen of espionage, ready to sabotage the memorandum of understanding between the Islamic Republic and the United States – all behind the backs of President Massoud Pezeshkian and the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Ahmad Vahidi.

To contextualize Taeb and understand how he came to occupy such a central role, it is necessary to step back to the encounter that linked his life to that of Mojtaba Khamenei. Reports on the subject are sparse, but the evidence suggests that the two first crossed paths between 1987 and 1988 in the Habib battalion of the Pasdaran; this was still at the height of the war with Iraq. Taeb was 25 years old, whilst Mojtaba was 17 and had enlisted as a volunteer. At first glance, what they had in common was their study of the Qur’an and the limitation of not being particularly adept as men of action; the fact remains that, during this same period, other comrades-in-arms would enter the inner circle of Ali Khamenei’s heir, including, amongst others, Alireza Panahian, Esmail Kowsari, Ali Fazli and Ebrahim Jabbari. One day they would become known as the staunchest supporters of the Habib Battalion circle and would be spoken of as the backbone of Mojtaba’s power. Yet even within this select group, no one will boast such a close and intense relationship with the new leader as that enjoyed by Taeb. From his first experience as head of the Basij, through the complicated years at the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), from his rise to the top of the Pasdaran secret services, to the ill-advised manoeuvres that caused more than a few protests within the Beit, Ali Khamenei’s office, Taeb’s entire career – a career punctuated by prestigious posts, setbacks and some rather surprising comebacks – has so far unfolded in the wake of this friendship. Their partnership paved the way for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rise to the presidency in 2005, and it was once again Mojtaba and Taeb who orchestrated the relentless crackdown the regime unleashed against the demonstrations that erupted in the summer of 2009, in the wake of his fraudulent re-election.

After all, much of Taeb’s rise to prominence in the Islamic Republic is linked to his obsession with repression. “It is simply in his nature to always exaggerate,” says a source for Il Foglio in Tehran. “He is the sort of cold, composed person who suddenly explodes – someone who has never learnt to control his anger.” His propensity for violence was already evident in the 1990s, when Taeb’s name was not yet familiar to most people, but by then he was already listed amongst those responsible for the assassination of a number of dissidents abroad and, at the same time, amongst the organisers of a series of targeted killings of journalists and intellectuals. Until 2009, within the Khamenei regime, no one had any objections; but that year, during the protests, a number of ‘sons of’ were met with truncheons or gunfire, whilst others languished for months or weeks in Evin or the notorious Kahrizak detention centre, and within the clerical establishment there were those who began to raise objections. The conservative MP Ali Motahari, for example, made quite a stir. “When we entrust the management of a crisis to figures like Taeb,” he remarked at the time, “people who are very familiar with the truncheon but have no experience of thought, reason or prudence, we end up with a result that no one could wish for.” More recently, an Iranian political analyst interviewed by The Times regarding Taeb’s return as head of the Basij described him in these terms: “He is one of those who believe that even if 60 million Iranians were to be sacrificed on the altar of repression, it could, after all, be the prelude to the reappearance of the Mahdi”, the hidden imam who, according to Shia eschatology, will reappear when the world is irrevocably in the grip of chaos, destruction and injustice.

While Taeb managed to give a handful of conservative and reformist MPs sleepless nights in 2009, he does not appear to have disturbed Mojtaba’s sleep. That same year, as soon as his friend was ousted from the Ministry of Intelligence, Mojtaba sprang into action and worked behind the scenes to secure him a new position at the helm of the Pasdaran’s secret service – a post he would hold until 2022. Throughout his thirteen years in this role, Taeb’s primary concern remained his long-standing obsession with neutralising the internal front, the constant threat posed by the ‘velvet revolution’ and its ‘infiltrators’ – namely students, artists, journalists, Kurds, Baha’is and, above all, Iranians with dual nationality linked to NGOs. That said, the paranoia displayed by Taeb during that period towards environmentalists deserves an article of its own; one need only consider the Kafkaesque nightmare in which the brilliant researchers of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation find themselves embroiled, whose field studies to save the rare Asian cheetah from extinction, which began with the indispensable approval of the Iranian government, are interpreted as an attempt at espionage in which the poor big cats become a cover for gathering sensitive information with the aim of ‘spreading corruption across the land’. These are also the years in which Taeb develops a taste for a cut on the side (he is implicated in at least three corruption scandals) and the years in which he wages furious battles against internal enemies (the most striking cases involve the Rafsanjani clan, the Larijani family, President Hassan Rohani and his entourage), because yes, his is a Manichaean universe of ‘us’ and ‘them’, but those who have the honour of being counted amongst that ‘us’ are nonetheless subject to his tests of purity – tests in which devotion to Shia Islam and the Islamic Republic occupy a high place, though one that is increasingly lower than that reserved for the cult of Khamenei, father and son.

Yet, at times, being more realistic than the king is not enough. In June 2022, Taeb falls once more, because, caught up in the maelstrom of censorship frenzy against imaginary enemies, he has neglected the battle against the real ones. During his years at the helm of the Pasdaran intelligence service, there is a veritable bloodbath of nuclear scientists and engineers. Masoud Alimohammadi was killed in 2010; Majid Shahriari met the same fate that same year; Darioush Rezaeinejad in 2011; Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan in 2012; and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020. But commanders, even top commanders, have also fallen: in January 2020, the head of al-Quds, Qassem Suleimani, was assassinated in Baghdad, and in May 2022, a hitman on a motorbike shot Colonel Sayyad Khodaei. ‘What else has to happen before Taeb’s head rolls?’, his opponents ask, whilst his allies, in an effort to protect him, continue to point the finger at the Mois. In the end, the straw that breaks the camel’s back is a failed operation in Turkey targeting a group of Israeli tourists. It so happens that the Mossad and the Turkish secret services do their job, and ten members of the Iranian cell are arrested. At this point, diplomatic relations between Ankara and Tehran suffer a setback, and following the debacle, the chorus of criticism against Taeb can no longer be ignored.

To understand his official return in August, one must look back at his relationship with Mojtaba – whether he is alive or dead – and then at Taeb’s irrepressible propensity for brutality. “The United States is making the most of the blockade (of Iranian ports) and hopes that, over time, this will bring people back onto the streets,” a relative of Taeb told The Times, “but his appointment sends a message to the enemy (…) and that is not to rely on the idea of internal unrest, because now we have a real madman in charge.” The expert Said Leylaz agrees, arguing that Taeb is the right man to motivate the regime’s hard core, particularly at a time when the Basij will be able to exercise greater powers.

And yet Taeb remains Taeb, with his limitations and obsessions. “With him, you can never tell where propaganda begins and where it ends – does he genuinely believe the things he says? If so, we’re in the realm of psychopathology,” insists another source from Il Foglio in Mashhad, because on the flip side of the coin bearing Taeb’s devotion lies his inability to read reality. “Generation Z is asking us for more missiles and pre-emptive action,” he asserted in a speech delivered in November 2025. But even the stones in Tehran know that the mood is quite different. “If the young people of Generation Z were given the chance to be heard, they would speak of peace, freedom and hope,” corrected the reformist website Rouydad 24. – You only need to take a walk around university campuses or pay attention to conversations on social media to realise that for young Iranians, the issues of the day are censorship, economic insecurity, cultural restrictions, gender inequality and emigration.” And this is precisely the problem facing Taeb and his allies: their utter inability to imagine a world without fury and without missiles, whilst the majority have already begun to dream and, as far as they can, to experience something different.