page_title: History of children in the military
section_title: Iran
hierarchical_section_title: History of children in the military / After World War II: Historical examples by region / Middle East / Iran
caption_attribution_description: Detail of Revolutionary Mural Showing Child Soldier from Iran-Iraq War - Ardabil - Iranian Azerbaijan - Iran
context_page_description: Children in the military are children who are associated with military organizations, such as state armed forces and non-state armed groups. Throughout history and in many cultures, children have been involved in military campaigns. For example, thousands of children participated on all sides of the First World War and the Second World War. Children may be trained and used for combat, assigned to support roles such as porters or messengers, or used for tactical advantage as human shields or for political advantage in propaganda.
  Children are easy targets for military recruitment due to their greater susceptibility to influence compared to adults. Some children are recruited by force while others choose to join up, often to escape poverty or because they expect military life to offer a rite of passage to maturity.
context_section_description: During the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) the armed forces used children widely; the extent of the practice is not known but the number of children involved is thought to be in the tens of thousands. Armed groups associated with the government advertised widely for children from age 14 to join them, and the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, urged children to fight at the front. According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (now Child Soldiers International):
  Ayatollah Khomeini declared that parental permission was unnecessary for those going to the front, that volunteering for military duty was a religious obligation, and that serving in the armed forces took priority over all other forms of work or study. Various sources reported that children were indoctrinated into participating in combat. They were given "keys to paradise" and promised that they would go directly to heaven if they died as martyrs against the Iraqi enemy.
  The children involved were overwhelmingly from slums and poor villages, and some participated without the knowledge of their parents, including Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh. Thousands of children took part in human wave attacks, leading to widespread deaths and injuries. The total number of all Iranian casualties is estimated to be 200,000–600,000, of which approximately a third were aged 15–19 (and 3 percent under 14), according to one assessment.
  After the war, the Basij, an official militia organisation, continued to recruit children from age 15, focusing on those living in poverty and sometimes recruiting them by force. In 2004, the Basij was estimated to have as many as a million members of all ages. Ansar-e Hizbollah, an armed group tolerated by the government, also recruited children widely in the 2000s, with no age restriction. As of 2018, the Iranian armed forces continue to enlist from age 16 and the government has not yet ratified the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict.
caption: Detail of a propaganda mural showing a child soldier from the Iran-Iraq War, in Ardabil, Iranian Azerbaijan.
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