An Iranian man walks amid the rubble after an earthquake in Sayeh Khosh village in Hormozgan, Iran, July 2, 2022. Photo: ISNA/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

As the international community continues to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran, world leaders must ask if the diplomatic option is viable when dealing with Iran’s ayatollahs, who have promoted — since 1979 — child martyrdom in their school curriculum and on the battlefield.

Brainwashing children into martyrdom is presented by the ayatollahs as an extension of the Shiite mythology surrounding the 680 AD Battle of Karbala, which was the “Big Bang” of the Sunni-Shiite conflict, and the role model for martyrdom. During the battle, Hussain ibn Ali, the third Shia Imam and the grandson of Mohammed, and his warriors — including children — were betrayed and massacred by the Sunni Caliph Yazid.

During the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, children were sent by Iran to be slaughtered on mine-sweeping missions.

According to the Geneva-based Refworld (an arm of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees), “[Iranian] child soldiers, some as young as nine, were used extensively during the Iran-Iraq war … They were given ‘keys to paradise’ and promised that they would go directly to heaven if they died as martyrs against the Iraqi enemy….”

The report continues:

An Iranian government representative admitted in a closed-door sub-commission hearing that children did participate in the war against Iraq. … In a series of rulings issued in the autumn of 1982, Ayatollah Khomeini declared that parental permission was unnecessary for those going to the front. … Iranian officers captured by the Iraqis claimed that nine out of ten Iranian child soldiers were killed. … Boys as young as nine were reportedly used in human wave attacks and to serve as mine sweepers in the war with Iraq … Martyrs’ families enjoyed some social prestige and reportedly received monetary compensation per child, plus a martyr’s card entitling the family to food and other privileges. Child soldiers were nearly all from poor villages or slum families….

Radio Free Europe reported that “during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, when self-sacrifice and martyrdom became the quintessential values of the Islamic Revolution and the guiding principles of Iranian society, more than 550,000 [elementary and high school] students were sent to the front, often with a plastic ‘key to paradise’ hanging around their necks. … They were used as cannon fodder in human-wave attacks launched by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps against the Iraqi forces.”

Iran’s Welfare and Social Security Minister, Sadeq Mahsouli, said that “children should be educated in such a way that when they reach the age of 13, they will be able to imitate Hossein Fahmideh [i.e., commit martyrdom].'”

The New York Times‘ Terence Smith reported on “the 12-17 year old ‘Warriors of God’, joining Iran’s battle against Iraq, wearing blood-red headbands and a small metal key to heaven, if killed in the holy war against Iraq. They were divinely designated martyrs who stormed barbed wire or marched into Iraqi mine fields in the face of withering machine-gun fire to clear the way for Iranian tanks. The young boys were recruited by local clergy or simply rounded up in the villages of Iran, given an intensive indoctrination in the Shiite tradition of martyrdom, and then sent into battle against Iraqi armor.”

According to an IMPACT SE 2021-2022 study of Iran’s school curriculum: “….Child martyrdom is glorified … Martyrdom is viewed as a goal to be pursued in order to achieve spiritual perfection.”

Since February 1979 — when the ayatollahs assumed power in Iran — the diplomatic option has been a moral failure, rewarding a regime that has brainwashed children into martyrdom, in addition to repressing the ethnic and religious minorities of Iran.

Since February 1979, the diplomatic option has been a strategic failure, energizing a regime that has evolved into the regional and global epicenter of anti-US subversion, terrorism, and dissemination of advanced military systems throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

The US’ diplomatic option and moral values, on the one hand, and Iran’s child martyrdom and domestic and foreign policy, on the other hand, are dramatically incompatible.

The 43-year-old track record of the diplomatic option attests to its resounding failure and the need to shift to another option, which will free the Iranian people, the Middle East, and the globe of Iran’s ayatollahs.

The author is a commentator and former Israeli ambassador.