A child examines a military weapon in this undated photo. Iranian authorities are recruiting and mobilizing children as young as 12 for a military campaign led by the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to Amnesty International, which says the practice constitutes a war crime. (Christopher Estrada/U.S. Army)
Iran is recruiting and mobilizing children as young as 12 into a military campaign led by the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to Amnesty International, which says the practice amounts to a war crime.
In late March, Rahim Nadali, an IRGC official in Tehran, announced a recruitment campaign open to volunteers 12 and above to join “combatants defending the homeland,” the human rights organization said in a statement Thursday.
Eyewitnesses and video verified by the group show child soldiers armed with AK-47 pattern rifles and other weapons and deployed at checkpoints and patrols, the statement said.
The findings come a little more than a month after the U.S. and Israel launched a bombing campaign that has targeted Iran’s missile infrastructure, military sites and leadership.
Tehran has responded by launching attacks on Israel, U.S. partners in the Persian Gulf and American military bases in the Middle East. President Donald Trump has not ruled out sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.
“As U.S. and Israeli strikes hit thousands of IRGC sites … including through drone attacks targeting security patrols and checkpoints, the deployment of child soldiers alongside IRGC personnel or in their facilities puts them at grave risk of death and injury,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, a senior director at Amnesty International, said in the statement.
Nadali announced on state television last month that children as young as 12 could register to help Iran stand against “the global bully,” a term used for the United States, French news agency AFP reported at the time.
Young recruits are being assigned to a range of activities linked to the IRGC’s “operational and security” activities, including patrols, checkpoint duties, logistical support, distribution of equipment and supplies and assisting with food, medical and relief tasks, Amnesty International said.
“I saw a child at a checkpoint near our house … he just had the faint beginnings of a mustache,” an unidentified eyewitness said, according to the statement. “It seemed like he was struggling to breathe from the effort of lifting the gun. He was pointing the gun toward the cars.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch has also criticized Iran’s use of children in military and security roles.
“There is no excuse for a military recruitment drive that targets children to sign up, much less 12-year-olds,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director for the organization. “Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children’s lives for some extra manpower.”
U.S. and Israeli airstrikes had killed more than 1,900 people as of Thursday, including 216 children, according to Iranian authorities.
The Pentagon has not released a comprehensive official death toll for people killed in Iran, but as of Thursday it has confirmed it struck over 12,300 targets in the country since the start of the war.
U.S. military investigators have said it’s likely that American forces were responsible for a strike on an Iranian girls school that killed 168 people, including more than 100 children, Reuters reported, citing two unidentified U.S. officials. The Pentagon says an investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, Iranian attacks have killed at least 16 in Israel, four in the West Bank and 23 in Gulf Arab states since the start of the war on Feb. 28.
