Supreme Dick has had just about enough

Iran's Supreme Dick, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared today that he has "had just about enough of these unruly protestors raising a ruckus in our city streets with all their chanting and negativity and behavior that in general is embarrassing to our great nation in front of a whole world that is watching." "I promised there would be bloodshed if these protests continued, and I am nothing if not a man of my word," the Supreme Dick told an assembly of Iranian clergy. "I have tried being conciliatory, double checking the ballots for irregularities, and still the protests have continued. I have issued tear-gas warnings and broken out our mighty water cannons, and all I get in return is a crowd of wet and weepy-eyed dissidents. And so today, my patience exhausted, I am unleashing The Basij." "Oh no," cried half a million protestors, "not The Basij." The Basij (or Nirouye Moqavemate Basij if you want to be formal) are an interesting group of assholes, possibly unique to post-revolutionary Iran. Primarily made up of mid to lower class young Iranians, they are a loosely organized group of volunteers, and I don't use the word 'loosely' loosely. Depending on who is doing the estimating, they have somewhere between four hundred thousand and twelve million members. They perform a variety of functions: organizing religious ceremonies, assisting in emergency management, and the always vital work of acting as Iran's morals police. So if you find yourself in trouble for being immodestly dressed, young lady, chances are you've been besieged by The Basij. The very most important thing that The Basij do is run amuck, which they do with great abandon. During the Iran-Iraq war, where they first came to prominence, they were really good at charging onto battlefields and using their bodies to locate the mines, or acting as human waves to absorb a lot of the enemies' spare bullets. They take their orders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, but they wear no uniforms or identifying markers, which explains why so many of the visuals emerging from Iran look like citizen clashes. But it's easy to tell: The Basij are the ones with the truncheons and iron pipes. "Oh yes," replied the Supreme Dick, "The Basij. Allah's own little hooligans. Let the whole world take a gander at this."