By Robert Harris
Pope Leo’s sustained and extraordinary invective against the long-overdue war 
on Iran relativises the moral positions of the opposing sides, by implicitly treating both the Iranian regime and Hizbullah as reasonable moral agents desiring peace. The pontiff has sought that this position be repeatedly reiterated by the Roman Catholic priesthood in daily church services across the world.
The notion that actors that have long displayed a particularly intense kind of repulsive depravity, which has been a cornerstone of their agency from the very outset, are somehow capable of any such humanity is not only thoroughly absurd, it is such a disturbing inversion of evident fact that it surely stands as an evident evil in its own right! The Iranian regime can only stand as an affront to the most elemental notions of human dignity, such that its own people welcome this warfare. Irregardless of the fairness of such criticism, it comes as no surprise to see Anti-Christ narratives appear due as a result of the Pope’s unwarranted meddling. One only has to ask what on earth does Pope Leo mean by “peace” – the continued “tyranny” upon the Iranian people as they continue to execute their populace for mere protest?
There are many reminders of the profane atrocities of the Iranian regime – we have brainwashed children being awarded (plastic) keys to access Heaven as reward for walking over landmines/facing armed Iraqi soldiers in human waves, and, latterly children being used as executioners for persons of conscience. This atrocious conduct largely involved the Basij – a paramilitary force – whose past abuses are celebrated by the Iranian regime.
To take another example of the horrors perpetrated by the Basij, below is an account provided by an anonymous member of the Basij was interviewed in an article entitled ‘I wed Iranian girls before execution’ (by Sabina Amidi, dated July 19, 2009 – paragraphs added). He had been incarcerated for freeing two teenagers, that appear to have been part of the 2009 Iranian Green Movement, a wave of mass protests following the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The article recounts Khomeini’s response to the protests in 1988, where he ordered the “marriage”, i.e. the rape of teenage girls and women just before their executions, based on the belief that virgins have some prospect of going to Heaven. The interview also recounts how the Basij continued to use underage youths for the machinations of the regime, in this instance, teenage boys which were recruited to terrorise the Iranian populace.
[…] “There have been many other police and members of the security forces arrested because they have shown leniency toward the protesters out on the streets, or released them from custody without consulting our superiors,” he said.
He pinned the blame for much of the most ruthless violence employed by the Iranian security apparatus against opposition protesters on what he called “imported security forces” – recruits, as young as 14 and 15, he said, who have been brought from small villages into the bigger cities where the protests have been centered.
“Fourteen and 15-year old boys are given so much power, which I am sorry to say they have abused,” he said. “These kids do anything they please – forcing people to empty out their wallets, taking whatever they want from stores without paying, and touching young women inappropriately. The girls are so frightened that they remain quiet and let them do what they want.” These youngsters, and other “plainclothes vigilantes,” were committing most of the crimes in the names of the regime, he said.
Asked about his own role in the brutal crackdowns on the protesters, whether he had been beaten demonstrators and whether he regretted his actions, he answered evasively. “I did not attack any of the rioters – and even if I had, it is my duty to follow orders,” he began. “I don’t have any regrets,” he went on, “except for when I worked as a prison guard during my adolescence.”
Explaining how he had come to join the volunteer Basiji forces, he said his mother had taken him to them. When he was 16, “my mother took me to a Basiji station and begged them to take me under their wing because I had no one and nothing foreseeable in my future. My father was martyred during the war in Iraq and she did not want me to get hooked on drugs and become a street thug. I had no choice,” he said.
He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so “impressed my superiors” that, at 18, “I was given the ‘honor’ to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death.”
In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a “wedding” ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard – essentially raped by her “husband.” “I regret that, even though the marriages were legal,” he said.
Why the regret, if the marriages were “legal?” “Because,” he went on, “I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food.
By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. “I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over,” he said. “I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.” […]
