The Iranian regime has enlisted the aid of foreign militias to man checkpoints across Tehran in order to support its security forces in order to keep civilian protests down, the Telegraph reported on Friday, citing videos circulating on social media.
According to the Telegraph, which has confirmed the videos with accounts from several Tehran residents, members of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces militia have been seen conducting vehicle searches and enforcing “ hijab regulations” in cities across the country.
The PMF, also known in Arabic as "Hashd al-Shaabi," is also reportedly conducting neighborhood patrols alongside the regime’s security forces.
“Right now, for several nights here, there are people at our neighborhood checkpoint who don’t speak Persian,” the Telegraph quoted a resident from Tehran as saying. “They wear Hashd al-Shaabi uniforms and only communicate with gestures and a few broken words of Arabic or Persian.”
The Afghan Fatemiyoun militia has also been reportedly deployed alongside the PMF in Iran’s streets.
“Before it was just Basij [militia], but now the composition has changed. Several people with clear Arabic military uniforms are standing there, and they behave much more harshly,” the resident was quoted as saying.
“It’s like they have no restrictions. Even the Iranians don’t say anything to them.”
Further, the Telegraph noted other reports from Karaj, a city west of Tehran, where residents have encountered foreign personnel manning checkpoints with “less restraint than their Iranian counterparts” and who communicate mainly through gestures and in Arabic.
Iran’s government has not officially acknowledged the role of these foreign militias.
Regime imposing terror in the streets
In an interview with 103FM in late April, social media expert Effi Banai said that footage emerging from Iran paints a complex and increasingly tense picture.
“We see the pressure on the regime on social media,” Banai said. “They have brought in militias from abroad, from Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.”
He explained that the militias “go around in trucks, in civilian clothing, carrying machine guns. The soldiers speak Arabic rather than Persian, [which the locals notice and comment about on social media].”
“They are imposing terror in the streets so that people won’t go out and protest. The regime knows its people are hungry, desperate, and are afraid they will take to the streets again.”