Who Are the ‘Summoned People’? Nightly Gatherings: A Show of Power or a New Mechanism for Holding the Streets?
S. Rouzbeh
2026-10-29

An examination of government supporters' sustained nightly gatherings, their organisation, and what this presence reveals about the Islamic Republic's social base.

Who are the “summoned people”, and who has “summoned” them for what mission?

In its simplest sense, mab'outh means stirred into action and sent forth, a word usually associated with a mission in religious language. On 12 Bahman 1404, Ali Khamenei brought this term into current political discourse, saying that if something happened to the country, God would “summon” these people to confront events and “the people will finish the job”. Defining the word here is not intended as a linguistic debate. Its significance lies in the mission subsequently assigned to this group.

A few months later, the “summoned people” were more than an expression. Groups appeared at night in squares, streets and outside some mosques and urban centres. They waved flags, chanted slogans and continued this presence for weeks and then months. In some places, a “Headquarters for Guiding the People's Mobilisation” and bases of the same name were established, with plans to maintain and strengthen the nightly presence. Something that might have been a response lasting a few days to a crisis became a continuous presence.

Masoud Pezeshkian gave the clearest explanation of this crowd's function at the United Nations General Assembly. He said the Iranian people had been in the streets every night for the previous seven months to prevent those who, he claimed, had been equipped, trained and armed by Israel and the United States and wanted to disrupt the country's security. He then called these same people the government's “source of power and support”.

This wording matters. When the president presents the nightly presence of a group of citizens to the UN as the Islamic Republic's “source of power”, he is speaking of more than occasional commemorative gatherings. This presence must be seen, must continue and must send a message at home and abroad that the government still has a social force ready to take the field. The street has thus become part of displaying and preserving power, as well as a place for movement or even protest.

But a simple, practical question arises here. Suppose an ordinary citizen wakes at six in the morning: a Snapp driver, a salesperson, a worker, an employee or a shopkeeper. They work eight, ten or twelve hours to pay rent and meet their family's food and other costs. They return home at night and must begin the same life again the next morning. For how many nights can such a person go back out at nine or ten and remain at a political programme until midnight or one in the morning?

This assumption proves nothing on its own. Many participants may attend only on some nights; some may be retired, students or people with different working hours. But when we speak of months of attendance “every night”, another question becomes unavoidable: who forms the core that sustains this presence? What jobs do they have? How many belong to the Basij or organised networks, and how many are citizens with no organisational ties?

This question becomes more significant in Iran's current economic circumstances. Society faces inflation, falling purchasing power, rent pressure, food and medicine costs and job insecurity. Many people must work long hours or have several sources of income to make ends meet. Under these conditions, the regular nightly presence of one group cannot be treated as a direct picture of society as a whole. Rather than measuring general public support, it may reveal the organisational and mobilisation capacity of a loyal core.

I have myself seen shopping and gift cards distributed at some similar events. Accounts and images of gifts and incentives connected with these gatherings have also circulated on social media. This observation and these images are insufficient to generalise to every city and participant, and cannot establish that everyone present was paid to attend. But even if gifts and incentives are set entirely aside, the central question remains: how are all these flags, stages, sound systems, service tents, programmes, training and continuous attendance organised?

A popular movement can begin spontaneously and become organised later. Organisation does not in itself negate its popular nature. But when headquarters and bases are established to sustain attendance, executive bodies and the Basij enter the programme, and decisions are taken about maintaining it, organisation can no longer be omitted from the analysis. The main issue is not whether participants are paid. It is how a street presence becomes a permanent structure for holding the ground.

Over past decades, the Islamic Republic has relied on the IRGC, the Basij, the police, intelligence bodies and networks of official institutions to preserve power. In this newer model, “the people”, too, must constantly be seen on the scene alongside formal forces. A street that could host protest is filled with loyal forces. The flags keep moving, and the message is conveyed that a group stands ready to enter the field in a crisis.

This presence can perform several functions simultaneously: displaying a social base, continuously occupying public space, creating a reserve force for a crisis and telling the dissatisfied that the street is not empty. The participants do not even need to be a majority. In politics, a limited but disciplined and constantly present group can project an image far larger than its actual weight.

The important point is that this display has not ended. Pezeshkian spoke at the UN of seven months of nightly attendance, but official reports in Mehr and then Aban show that the gatherings continued. By 6 Aban 1405, official reports from North Khorasan and elsewhere put the presence at its 241st night: roughly eight months continuously in the streets. A day earlier, Lorestan's governor had spoken of “240 nights” and invited people to the next event. We are therefore no longer dealing with a short-lived wave or an emotional response.

Here the central contradiction emerges. If this presence is entirely spontaneous, why must structures be created, plans made and official bodies' resources used to keep it going? If it is society's natural, spontaneous presence, why has preserving it become a political and security objective? These questions do not deny participants' beliefs or motives. Many may attend with complete conviction. But individual motivation is one thing; the mechanism sustaining attendance for 241 nights is another.

This very persistence may reveal the phenomenon's function more clearly than any slogan. A government that sees the street as part of its survival equation cannot allow it to remain empty: an empty street might, on another day, be filled by a different crowd. From this perspective, the “summoned people” are more than those waving flags at night. They are part of a strategy to maintain a presence, keep a loyal core ready and present that core, at home and abroad, in the name of “the people”.

We began by asking who the summoned people are. After 241 nights, the question has become sharper: if this presence is truly spontaneous, what mechanism has kept it alive, night after night, for eight months? And if this crowd is indeed the government's “source of power”, as the president says, why must this power be reproduced and displayed in the street every night?

Perhaps that is the final issue: does this street presence demonstrate the government's natural, broad-based strength, or is it a street the Islamic Republic cannot risk leaving empty?

Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/entry-1793374864515-56263557
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