Organizing of Iran's Shah Militia Supporters; the Fadāiyān-e Shāh Organizations (1941-1957)

Under the title of “Fadāiyān-e Shāh”, some militia groups were formed in some regions of the country to support the Shah during the reign of Pahlavi II. These groups were different from the other similar groups of government supporters, such as urban thugs or temporary partisans, in terms of formation, function, organization and their relations with the government. The Fadāiyān-e Shāh supported the shah and the army in some of events caused by World War II and the coup of August 19, 1953. The main issue, here, is the study of organizing process of such groups with a relatively permanent nature in terms of history and the impact of institutional factors. To obtain descriptive findings, the historical data has been extracted from military and governmental documents, interviews with some individuals associated with militias and other sources, and they have been used in this study, through a historical method, to provide an interpretative plan. The results show that these organizations had initially tried to strengthen government forces in the form of temporary partisan groups at the beginning of the World War II and afterwards, and the government gave them an informal legitimacy after the crisis in Azerbaijan. They succeeded in achieving an organizational system through the provocation of the army and the radical wing, when Mosaddeqh was serving as Iran's prime minister. After the coup, the government used their ideological and organizational experiences as a model to create a comprehensive militia organization.