Word: basij
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...smoke rises from the trees below. Young Iranian soldiers smile and wave from open trucks snaking up Kurdistan's dusty mountain roads toward the Iraqi front. "Down with Israel!" they chant. "Down with Russia! Down with America!" Some are not old enough to shave, but no matter. They are basij, the volunteers to whom the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini has promised eternal bliss should they fall in battle. They beam at the soft thud as an Iranian artillery shell is fired toward Iraqi forces in the village of Mawat, just over a nearby ridge. But then they ignore the incoming Iraqi...
...remained virtually closed to Americans since 1979, a TIME reporter found that the Ayatullah's regime has managed, for the moment, to weather these challenges with surprising agility. It has settled nearly all its international debts, signed up a steady stream of volunteers to the suicide-running Basij corps and, on paper at least, silenced most of its opposition. "It's really quite amazing," says an American who does business with Iran, "that they are doing as well as they...
...that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein launched in 1980 to topple Khomeini has so far only consolidated his hold. Some 45% of Iran's 42.5 million people are under 14, and many seem fired by a passionate loyalty to the Ayatullah. Perhaps 50% of the suicide-driven Basij corps are teenagers; eight-year-old zealots who stay at home may serve the regime by informing on their parents, sometimes sending them to the firing squads. "Considering our opposition to the regime," says a U.S. analyst, "we'd like to see cracks in the foundation...
...latest battlefield in the long, murderous war between Iran and Iraq is a 50-mile front from Dezful in Iran across the border to the Iraqi town of Amara. There, beginning on Nov. 1, an Iranian force of about 20,000, mostly fanatical Islamic Guard units and including some basij, or groups of teen-age zealots, staged a new offensive. Attacking at night to neutralize Iraq's overwhelming air superiority, and sticking to the high, steep terrain that favors Iranian manpower over Iraqi firepower, they claim to have captured 210 sq. mi. of territory, killing 6,100 Iraqi defenders...