Calling up the reserves?

Is Iran taking steps to prepare for a possible confrontation with the West?

Iran has expanded the authority of the Basij militia to include police, defense and relief operations.

Officials said the new government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad approved a plan to enhance the role of the Basij Resistance Force. Under the plan, the Basij would become a fully-fledged defense unit with police and military authority.

The Basij, said to have about 1 million members, has been designated as the shield of the Islamic regime and its principles. Over the last few years, the regime has used the Basij to quell pro-reform student demonstrations and enforce the Islamic dress code in and around Iranian universities.

Officials said that under the latest plan the Basij would be granted arrest powers. They said Basij officers would be trained in tracking and capturing offenders of the Islamic dress code and other religious mores.

Here is some background, from last summer, on the Basij militia:

Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday appointed the commander of a conservative militia as the new chief of the national police force, the Iranian Student News Agency reported.

The new chief, Brig. Gen. Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam, 44, will replace Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf, who resigned to run for president in last month's election.

General Ahmadi Moghadam is the commander in Tehran of the Basij, a conservative volunteer militia that is a branch of the Revolutionary Guards and that has taken part in a crackdown against pro-democracy protests. He is also a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards. The Basij, whose members supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative candidate who won the presidency, uses the vast network of mosques around the country as its organizational base.

Iran has exeperienced protests and demonstrations in recent months. This move may be a precaution in case of Western air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, so pro-democracy/anti-regime elements don't take advantage of attacks to threaten the regime.