Hossein Taeb built a reputation for ruthlessness over a four-decade career in Iran’s post-revolution security apparatus. After a break from the public eye, he’s back, reprising his former job as head of the country’s powerful volunteer militia, the Basij.
The appointment of the 63-year-old earlier this month confirms his place among a tiny circle of trusted confidants to the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and as one of the key decision-makers reshaping a country shaken by unprecedented protests and war.
‘Taeb is now sitting at the top of the system that he was central to creating,’ said Mohammad Hossein Torkaman, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps member, who left Iran in 2010 and now lives in exile in Europe.
‘The most important job he has is to prevent and stop internal dissent and to suppress it when it does happen,’ added Torkaman.
That task is particularly critical to the regime as the US pivots from military threats to economic pressure as a way to try to end the near six-month war. The tougher sanctions come as Iran’s currency is flailing and its access to fuel shrinking-both pressure points that have previously triggered domestic protests.
Taeb’s selection also indicates an expanded role for the Basij-a vast network of paramilitaries and other loyalists that enjoys sprawling economic interests from banking to steel, and which Iran claims can mobilize 20 million people, equivalent to a fifth of the population.
Its members, zealous young men and women, operate in mosques, workplaces and universities across the country. They have been deployed to disrupt public gatherings and violently put down demonstrations.
Most recently, security forces including the Basij killed thousands in January in the biggest and bloodiest unrest in the Islamic Republic’s history. At the peak of the unrest in Isfahan province, 19 Basij members died, higher than the number of police and IRGC casualties combined.
Khamenei’s decree appointing Taeb tasked him with ‘strengthening the people’s information network’ and ‘utilizing new technologies for grassroots resistance’ to make ‘Every Iranian a Basiji.’ Diplomats and analysts see that as a mandate to turn the organization into Khamenei’s eyes and ears on the street.
In return for their loyalty, members get economic perks like preferential access to housing and public-sector jobs. The Basij gives the fledgling supreme leader-who’s yet to appear in public since he succeeded his father-a loyal constituency that he can use to consolidate power, according to Saeid Golkar, an associate professor of political science in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who’s written a book on the militia.
‘This new Basij under Taeb will work as a social base under Mojtaba, not only to control society but also control the political elite,’ he said by phone. ‘They’re much more zealous than other security institutions, and they’re everywhere.’
Paranoia and protest
Born in Tehran in 1963, Taeb trained as a cleric and joined the IRGC in the early 1980s during the grueling eight-year war with Iraq, in which he fought alongside the younger Khamenei.
After the war he worked on counter-espionage for the Ministry of Intelligence and by the late 1990s was coordinating directly with Mojtaba Khamenei on domestic security issues, according to comments by the former head of state media Mohammad Sarafraz in 2021.
That prepared him to lead the Basij in 2009, when the militia suppressed the Green Movement protests sparked by a disputed election. The crackdown left dozens dead and led to the US sanctioning Taeb for human rights abuses.
His methods were a shock even to insiders. He was known for ruthlessness and paranoia, surveilling his own staff and having them tortured if he suspected them of treachery, said Torkaman, the former IRGC member.
‘When we hand the management of the recent crisis to people like Taeb, who are more familiar with batons than with thought, reason and prudence, this is the result,’ longtime member of parliament Ali Motahari wrote in 2009, amid the Green Movement protests. In the wake of that movement, the elder Khamenei set up the IRGC Intelligence Organization, a parallel spy service that reports to the supreme leader rather than the government, and picked Taeb to lead it. According to state TV, highlights of his 13-year tenure include the arrest of dual nationals, fighting corruption and tracking down dissidents abroad.
A string of security breaches blamed on Israel led to Taeb’s dismissal in 2022. In public he took on a symbolic role as adviser to the commander of the IRGC, but in practice he was coordinating with Mojtaba on security within his father’s office, according to diplomats.
Bringing Taeb back despite his dismissal ‘is a clear indication of the closeness of Taeb and Mojtaba,’ said Golkar, the academic.
‘When you are repressing people, when you are killing people, you need this loyalty, and I think no other organization in Iran can bring that.’