The news report is questionable, however.
The SNN student news agency reported Sunday that the Basij unit commanders at four of Tehran’s major universities had all been cashiered. They were Mohammad-Saeed Sarafraz at Sharif University; Hossain Pishva at Amir Kabir University; Amin Hassani at Elm o Sanat University; and Mohammad-Mehdi Safar-Harani at Shahid Beheshti University.
Digarban, a European-based website that monitors state agencies in Iran, said the four men had led their groups in the November attacks that ransacked the British embassy compound in downtown Tehran and the Qolhak Gardens residential compound farther north.
The report of the dismissals made it sound like the four had acted on their own without authorization from higher authority.
But many questioned that. They noted that the police made no effort to halt or even slow the attacks for hours. “The student Basij groups can’t tell the police to stand aside,” one said. “Only more senior authority can do that.”
The embassy attack essentially blew up in the regime’s face and only helped convince Europeans to take a stronger stand against Iran. Within weeks, the EU was drafting the harsh sanctions on Iran that just took effect July 1.
There was a suspicion that the regime is now trying to back away from the embassy raid and blame it on more junior people.