No. of Recommendations: 4
Reports are emerging of multiple new attacks targeting Basij militia units, the street-level enforcers used by Iran’s Islamic regime to police neighbourhoods and suppress dissent.
Several checkpoints and militia positions are said to have been hit overnight, continuing a pattern of strikes against the regime’s internal security network.Yeah, probably not anything to rest your hopes on anytime soon. The Basij are
everywhere in Iran - they have about a million active members, and somewhere between 40,000 and 54,000 "bases" spread throughout the country. They're the gruntiest of the low-level grunts, and many (most?) are just entry-level minor players that assist the regime but are strategically irrelevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basij#Size,_basesSo hitting "several" checkpoints and militia positions are highly unlikely to have any material impact over any materially relevant period of time. We'll see how it goes, but the clock is ticking. We've used up probably about a quarter of the time we have to conduct this operation - if the Straits remain closed for more than another six weeks, the global economic catastrophe will make the Great Recession look like a mild downturn, and I don't think Trump has the stomach for that. I also don't think we have an effective option for opening the Strait as long as the regime wants it closed. So if we're going to try to undo the regime by knocking out Basij checkpoints, we're not going to be able to achieve that by hitting modest enough numbers that one would report that "several...are said to have been hit overnight." It would have to be massive numbers and unequivocal.
