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Each September, Iranian classrooms should ring with children’s laughter and the excitement of learning. Instead, the start of the academic year evokes a painful memory: the tens of thousands of schoolchildren who never returned. Students were forced from their desks into the battlefields of the Iran–Iraq war under the rule of the regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini. Their deaths stand as one of the darkest crimes in the history of the Iranian regime, and their absence still haunts Iranian society today. Even state-linked outlets now acknowledge “about 36,000 student martyrs,” a figure repeated by senior officials on Iranian state TV. IRGC aerospace commander Amir-Ali Hajizadeh once said that “nearly 20%” of war dead were students—an admission carried by regime-aligned media.
State-linked Iranian outlets also underscore how overwhelmingly young the war’s casualty profile was. Borna News quoted a Tehran municipal veterans’ official in 2022 asserting that “over 72% of martyrs were younger than 23,” alongside totals of 225,000 martyrs, 574,000 wounded veterans, and 43,000 POWs. A local governor in East Azerbaijan told Akhbar Bonab that 48% of martyrs were under 25, 85% were under 30.
A young Tehran University student questions the inaction of political groups in the face of Iran’s regime crimes in continuing the war while peace was within reach in Iran Iraq war. #IranRevolution #Iran #IranRevoIution2023#مرگ_بر_ستمگر_چه_شاه_باشه_چه_رهبر pic.twitter.com/7YRRTLWqLN
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) January 22, 2023
A Generation Sent to Die
The Iran–Iraq war, prolonged by Khomeini to protect his own power, became a slaughterhouse for Iran’s youth. State propaganda glorified the conflict as a “Sacred Defense,” but behind the rhetoric lay a brutal reality: children were dispatched to the front lines as expendable soldiers. Many were used in human wave assaults or sent to clear minefields with their bodies.
What should have been years of study and growth were instead turned into years of forced sacrifice. Interviews with a front-line narrator and a wartime IRGC commander published by the state-run outlet Ensafnews confirm the presence of under-18s in combat zones and describe how some youths altered birth documents or bypassed consent to reach the front—while many commanders tried to push those under 16 to rear-area duties.
For context, that same report reproduces extracts from the Foundation of Martyrs’ statistical yearbook showing that 42–44% of recorded “martyrs” fell in the 16–20 age band—an umbrella tally that also includes non-combat victims of city bombings, so it cannot be read as a pure count of child combat deaths.
#Iran News in Brief
Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the #IRGCterrorists Aerospace Forces and the individual responsible for the downing of the Ukrainian #PS752 plane, has acknowledged employing tens of thousands of students during the Iran-Iraq war. 1/https://t.co/oBk9QB0Z2L pic.twitter.com/YIkWVOKB73— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 13, 2023
The Role of Khomeini’s Orders
At the time, Ruhollah Khomeini, as Supreme Leader, issued a decree that students did not need parental permission to join the front. This fatwa effectively sanctioned the recruitment of children into war. Earlier regime figures admitted the death toll of student soldiers was over 45,000, but recent official figures were reduced to 36,000—an attempt to downplay the sheer scale of the loss.
Whether 36,000 or 45,000, the crime remains the same: the systematic sacrifice of schoolchildren to fuel a war that should have ended years earlier. Contemporaneous practice on the ground, however, was uneven: Iranian veterans and commanders interviewed by Ensafnews say units often claimed to bar under-16s and required parental consent for 16–17-year-olds—yet youths still reached front lines through so-called “volunteer channels” or document manipulation.
#Iran-Backed Militias in #Iraq Training Children for War. https://t.co/gEDBIUkQFn pic.twitter.com/s3gha1afvl
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 16, 2017
A Crime That Still Defines the Regime
The killing of thousands of students during the Iran-Iraq war is more than a historical tragedy; it is a living reminder of the regime’s contempt for human life. By sacrificing its youngest citizens for political gain, the leadership demonstrated that there were no limits in its pursuit of power. Today, as Iranian students step into their classrooms, the regime’s propaganda seeks to mask this crime, but the memory persists in every mourning family and in the collective conscience of the Iranian people.
The students killed in the Iran-Iraq war remain a silent but powerful accusation against the clerical regime. Their memory is a warning that the Iranian regime’s crimes are not confined to the past—they continue in different forms today. As Iran’s classrooms reopen, they carry both the promise of the nation’s future and the burden of a history that demands justice.