The Iranian regime is encouraging children as young as 12 to join the war efforts against US and Israeli military forces, a human rights group has said. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) appears to be conducting a campaign open to recruiting children as young as 12 to volunteer to become “homeland defending combatants,” Human Rights Watch said.
A campaign by the feared IRGC to enlist civilians, called “Homeland Defending Combatants for Iran,” had set the minimum age of participants at 12, the human rights group said, warning that children at military facilities would be at serious risk of death and injury as airstrikes continue to target the country. Iranian officials should revoke the campaign and prohibit all military and paramilitary forces in Iran from enlisting children under 18, the same group added. The warning comes as the Iranian Defa Press News Agency circulated a poster showing two young children smiling in front of a man in uniform and a woman, with missiles falling from the sky.
Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, said: “There is no excuse for a military recruitment drive that targets children to sign up, much less 12-year-olds. What this boils down to is that Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children’s lives for some extra manpower.”
The campaign aims to attract civilians to provide cooking services and medical care, distribute items, and deal with damaged homes. It also seeks to find people for security activities such as staffing checkpoints, operational patrols, intelligence patrols, and vehicle convoys, said Rahim Nadali, an IRGC official, in an interview with Defa.
In relation to intelligence and operational patrols, the official added, « teenagers and the youth repeatedly have come and said that they want to take part in them ».
He went on to claim children have turned up at Basij checkpoints across cities demanding to help the Iranian military effort.
He added: « 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 harrowing report comes more than a month into the war in Iran, which started with Operation Epic Fury – the US codename for military strikes carried out jointly with Israel on February 28.
The operation has four goals, according to the Pentagon, including the destruction of the Iranian navy and barring Tehran from ever being able to build nuclear weapons.
In retaliation for the operation, Iran has been carrying out retaliatory attacks against neighbouring nations including Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Source link
