Report: Iran Is Deploying Children at Checkpoints

An 11-year-old's death at a Tehran checkpoint is drawing new attention to Iran's use of children in its security apparatus, as the Revolutionary Guard rolls out a program to sign up "volunteers" as young as 12. Alireza Jafari and his father were killed on March 11 while helping Basij militia forces "maintain the security of Tehran and its people," his mother told the state-linked Hamshahri newspaper, which blamed an Israeli drone strike

An IRGC official said the new "Homeland Defender Fighters for Iran" initiative will place minors on duties including patrols and checkpoint deployment, with recruitment through Basij-linked mosques and public squares. Witnesses in Tehran and other cities told the BBC they have seen armed teenagers stopping and searching cars; one described a boy in Karaj with a Kalashnikov "whose moustache hadn't fully grown." A woman in Rasht said young people on duty in a city square "were wearing masks so their faces were covered. But it's obvious that they are children; I can see it from their eyes. They are short as well. They stand in front of those adult forces. I feel pity for them and I get scared at the same time."

Human Rights Watch called the recruitment drive a "grave violation of children's rights" and a potential war crime if it involves those under 15. Legal and policy experts warned that placing untrained minors in tense security roles risks escalating violence and reflects what one analyst described as the government's "desperation" to fill its ranks. The Telegraph reports that Iran has a long history of deploying minors for security roles and sometimes combat roles, with child soldiers deployed during its war with Iraq in the 1980s.