Iran Expands Child Soldier Recruitment, Cracks Down on Dissent Amid Escalating US-Israeli Strikes

As US and Israeli strikes pound Iranian military sites, Iran is lowering the enlistment age for security roles to 12 and threating civilians with death for photographing war damage, fueling international outrage.

Last week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced a campaign recruiting children as young as 12 to serve as “Homeland Defending Combatants for Iran,” assisting with patrols, checkpoints, and logistics.

With the minimum age for war roles officially lowered to 12, human rights groups are now condemning the move, demanding that Iranian authorities immediately halt the campaign while imposing a complete ban on enlisting children under 18 in all military and paramilitary forces.

“There is no excuse for a military recruitment drive that targets children to sign up, much less 12-year-olds,” Bill Van Esveld, associate director for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “What this boils down to is that Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children’s lives for some extra manpower.”

“The officials involved in this reprehensible policy are putting children at risk of serious and irreversible harm and themselves at risk of criminal liability,” Van Esveld continued. “Senior leaders who fail to put a stop to this can make no claim to care for Iran’s children.”

For years, Iran has drafted children under 18 into the Basij militia, with Human Rights Watch documenting boys as young as 14 years old killed in combat, revealing a brutal pattern of exploiting children on the battlefield.

In the past, widely circulated social media images and videos have repeatedly shown children and teenagers in military-style uniforms cracking down on protests, including during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, which erupted nationwide after Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in a Tehran police station following her arrest for allegedly violating hijab rules.

Under international law, Iran’s latest initiative flagrantly violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly prohibits the use of children in military activities, marking a dramatic breach of its global obligations.

Human Rights Watch also uncovered multiple other war crimes, including the Iranian government’s relentless use of cluster munitions delivered by ballistic missiles at Israel since the conflict erupted last month. At least four civilians have been killed in these strikes, which constitute clear violations of international humanitarian law.

“Iran’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Israel pose a foreseeable and long-lasting danger to civilians,” Patrick Thompson, a researcher in HRW’s Crisis, Conflict, and Arms Division, said in a statement. “Cluster munition bomblets are dispersed over a wide area, making them unlawfully indiscriminate in violation of the laws of war.”

Fired from rockets, missiles, or aircraft, cluster munitions spread dozens of explosive bomblets across large areas, leaving many unexploded and posing a long-term, landmine-like danger to civilians for years or even decades.

Amid relentless US and Israeli attacks and mounting international pressure, the regime is also intensifying its domestic crackdown, now warning that photographing war-damaged areas could carry the death penalty.

Under this newly enacted policy, people accused of spying or cooperating with “hostile states” could face the death penalty and have all their assets confiscated.

Anyone caught photographing damaged sites could be accused of espionage, potentially providing intelligence to coalition forces, and face execution.

“People who take photos or videos of damaged sites and share them are effectively confirming whether strikes hit their targets,” Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on Tuesday, describing the action as the equivalent of cooperating with and providing intelligence to the enemy.

According to Iranian media and watchdog groups, more than 1,000 people have been arrested this month for filming sensitive locations, sharing anti-government content online, or allegedly “cooperating with the enemy.”

Against the backdrop of large-scale US and Israeli strikes pounding key regime strongholds in Shiraz and Isfahan — where critical military infrastructure has been repeatedly hit — tensions have surged to a boiling point as the pressure campaign intensifies

On Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force launched another sustained wave of precision airstrikes against Iranian weapons production and research facilities around Tehran, seeking to disrupt and dismantle the missile supply and manufacturing networks that support Tehran’s military arsenal.

Meanwhile, the IRGC this week threatened 18 American multinational technology and industrial companies, accusing them of involvement in “terrorist operations” and labeling them as “legitimate targets.”

“We advise the employees of these institutions to immediately distance themselves from their workplaces to preserve their lives,” the statement published on Tuesday said. “These companies should expect the destruction of their respective units in exchange for each terror act in Iran, starting from 8 PM Tehran time on Wednesday, April 1st.”

Among the companies mentioned were major corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla, and Boeing.