The fanatical Iranian regime is turning children as young as 12 into cannon fodder as part of a desperate war recruitment drive, human rights groups have warned.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the campaign, called “Homeland Defending Combatants for Iran,” as the US and Israel pummel the rogue nation, Human Rights Watch reported.
The advertising poster for the push, published by Iran’s Defa Press News Agency, features two fresh-faced children, a boy and a girl, smiling in front of a man in a military uniform.
Rahim Nadali, an official from the IRGC’s 27th Mohammad Rasulullah Division, said in a televised interview on state TV that kids want to stand up against the “global bully,” referring to the US, Agence France-Presse reported.
“For the Basij checkpoints that you see across cities now, we have had many young people and teenagers demanding to be present in them,” he said.
“Given the ages that were making demands, we have set the [minimum] age at 12. Meaning now there are kids of 12 and 13 who want to be present in this space.”
The tasks include staffing checkpoints, gathering security data and operational patrols, the AFP reported. Other tasks include cooking, providing medical care and dealing with damaged homes.
Amnesty International said it had confirmed photos showing children wielding weapons such as AK-pattern assault rifles and standing alongside IRGC and other forces at checkpoints and on patrols.
The recruitment of child soldiers is a grave violation of international law, the rights group said.
“The Iranian authorities are shamelessly encouraging children as young as 12 to join an IRGC-run military campaign, putting them in grave danger and violating international law, which prohibits the recruitment and use of children in the military,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns at Amnesty International, said.
“Recruiting children under 15 into the armed forces constitutes a war crime,” she added.
The brutal theocratic regime has a disturbing history of recruiting children — and has even deployed child soldiers.
The IRGC sent Afghan immigrant children living in Iran into combat to support the Assad government during the civil war in Syria, according to Human Rights Watch, which documented boys as young as 14 being killed.
Iranian officials also admitted to recruiting hundreds of thousands of child soldiers to fight in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Amnesty International reports that over 550,000 were deployed, and at least 36,000 of the mwere killed.
During the 2022 protests in Iran, pictures showing children wearing helmets and carrying riot shields surfaced on social media, fueling suspicions that kids were being used to quash demonstrations.
Iran has also been accused of hiring children as young as 13 to carry out attacks on Israeli targets in Europe.
In May 2024, Swedish authorities thwarted a plot involving a 15-year-old boy intent on opening fire at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm.
Three teens involved in the Oct. 2024 shooting attack on an office of Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems in Gothenburg were convicted in April last year.
One boy accused of opening fire at the building was 13, meaning he was too young to stand trial under Swedish law.
Since the start of Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28, Iran has suffered more than 3,500 fatalities, with losses including at least 244 kids, according to the non-profit Human Rights Activists in Iran.
