How the Iranian regime uses children to fuel its warmongering and terrorism

The Basij targets Afghan immigrants in Iran, some as young as 14 years old, to fight in Syria.”

The US Department of Treasury on October 16 designated the Iranian Basij paramilitary forces along with 22 linked companies and financial institutions as terrorist organizations.
The US Treasury’s latest move against the Iranian regime effectively freezes the assets of these organizations and bans US citizens and companies from dealing with companies and financial institutions connected to Basij, the paramilitary wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Two days later, Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations said in her remarks in UN’s Security Council: “In less than two weeks, on October 30, Iran will celebrate Student Basij Day.”
“What does Basij Day celebrate? It is the day during the Iran-Iraq War when a 13-year-old boy strapped a live grenade to his body and leaped under an oncoming Iraqi tank. His name was Hossein Fahmideh. Child soldiers like Hossein were a horrifying feature of the Iran-Iraq War.”
Referring to how the Iranian regime brainwashed children in schools to send them to the front in the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s mainly as cannon fodder, Haley says: “Children were sent into battle with a plastic key to paradise hung around their necks. They were untrained and considered expendable.”
“The Basij Resistance Force is a paramilitary force operating under Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In addition to cracking down on dissidents and enforcing internal security in Iran, the Basij indoctrinate school children and provide combat training to children as young as 12 years old. These children are then coerced into fighting abroad for the IRGC,” she adds.
The Basij indoctrinate school children and provide combat training to children as young as 12 years old
The Basij indoctrinate school children and provide combat training to children as young as 12 years old

Referring to how the Iranian regime uses child soldiers in its more recent proxy wars and terrorist adventure, Haley says: “Since at least early 2015, the Iranian regime has used the Basij to recruit and train Iranian children to fight in Syria to support the brutal Assad regime. The Basij also targets Afghan immigrants in Iran, some as young as 14 years old, to fight in Syria.”
Nikki Haley’s remarks and the Treasury’s blacklisting of the IRGC Basij forces and its linked financial institutions indicates the growing international attention towards some of the very concerns the Iranian opposition has expressed over the past four decades.

Using child soldiers is forbidden by international law

Article 38 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly forbids using children as soldiers in wars. It states:
  1. States Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child.
  2. States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities.
  3. States Parties shall refrain from recruiting any person who has not attained the age of fifteen years into their armed forces. In recruiting among those persons who have attained the age of fifteen years but who have not attained the age of eighteen years, States Parties shall endeavor to give priority to those who are oldest.
  4. In accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population in armed conflicts, States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure protection and care of children who are affected by an armed conflict.
In addition, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines “conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 and using them to participate actively in hostilities” as war crimes.
The Iranian regime has signed the Convention on Children Rights, and the Iranian parliament has signed it in into law in 1994. But the regime has never respected the convention in real terms. Nikki Haley rightly points out how the Iranian regime uses child soldiers in Syria.

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