Military exercise of 110,000 Basij and Greater Tehran Guards will be held in the capital on Friday, January 11
The IRGC’s planned military exercise, featuring 110,000 participants drawn from the Basij and the Greater Tehran Guards, reflects a display of force bolstering domestic and external perceptions of Iran’s readiness to counter adversaries.
The maneuver is a tool for psychological warfare, targeting both domestic audiences to show regime stability and control and external observers, particularly Israel, to highlight Iran’s capacity for large-scale mobilization.
The exercise’s timing, in early January, fits Iran’s strategic practice of leveraging public displays of military strength to respond to perceived threats, commemorate key historical or revolutionary dates, and project unity amidst international pressures.
Labeling the Zionist regime as a primary adversary reinforces Iran’s ideological commitment to opposing Israel while attempting to unify internal factions under the banner of resistance against external threats.
In Tehran, diverse public reactions to such exercises include nationalistic support among regime loyalists to skepticism or indifference among dissidents and ordinary citizens weary of militarized rhetoric.
From a critical perspective, the exercise has a secondary objective, such as training forces in urban defense tactics, gathering intelligence on internal dissent during mobilization, and signaling deterrence capabilities in asymmetric warfare.
The scale of participation and the explicit focus on confronting “ill-wishers” suggest that the event functions as both a tactical rehearsal and a broader strategy for maintaining regime authority through intimidation and spectacle.
