Iran’s regime has reportedly stooped to new lows, recruiting children as young as 13 in Nordic countries to carry out attacks on Israeli targets. In exchange for committing murder, these young, impressionable recruits are offered payments beginning at approximately $1,500. This alarming revelation underscores Tehran’s desperation as Israel’s effective campaign against Iranian proxies continues to tighten the noose.
Exploiting Vulnerable Communities
Nordic nations—such as Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden—have become prime targets for this insidious strategy due to their significant migrant populations. These communities, often failing to assimilate with broader society, are seen by Iranian operatives as fertile ground for identifying and manipulating vulnerable youths.
Bloomberg News reported numerous instances where Iran has allegedly hired children to carry out terrorist attacks:
A 15-year-old boy gets into a taxi outside Stockholm hiding a loaded gun and asks to be taken to the Israeli embassy. A 13-year-old in Gothenburg is caught firing shots at Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems. At the same facility, a 16-year-old helps to plant home-made explosives outside the main entrance.
Investigators say that all three attacks this year are part of a new trend in which Iran-affiliated actors recruit local criminals, including minors, to strike at Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe. The Iranian mission at the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The incidents show how the war between Israel and Iran’s proxies across the Middle East is also driving Tehran to escalate its covert operations in Europe — and that is rattling governments already concerned that the conflict is stirring tension between communities divided over immigration.
This fall, both Swedish and Norwegian security services have warned against Iranian-backed operations and in October Norway temporarily raised its terror alert to high from medium, armed its police and set up controls on the border with its Scandinavian neighbor.
Plausible Deniability through Children
By recruiting minors, Tehran aims to maintain a façade of innocence, leveraging underage perpetrators to obscure direct links to the regime. Proponents within the regime argue this calculated tactic enables the state to preserve plausible deniability while advancing its agenda of destabilizing regions beyond its borders.
A Pattern of Exploitation
Iran’s exploitation of children for violent ends is not a new phenomenon. Back in 2017, Human Rights Watch exposed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ recruitment of Afghan immigrant children as young as 14 to fight in the brutal Syrian Civil War. Tombstones of these child soldiers serve as a haunting testament to the regime’s willingness to sacrifice young lives for geopolitical ambitions.
Iran is recruiting children as young as 14 to serve as child soldiers in Syria. Tombstones tell the story: @HRW. https://t.co/4fnrzErrPC pic.twitter.com/6pQ6CePmjE
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) October 1, 2017
In 2015, the Interior Ministry estimated that there were 2.5 million Afghans in Iran, many of them without residency papers. Human Rights Watch previously documented cases of Afghan refugees in Iran who “volunteered” to fight in Syria in the hopes of gaining legal status for their families.
Since 2013, Iran has supported and trained thousands of Afghans, at least some of them undocumented immigrants, as part of the Fatemiyoun division, a group that an Iranian newspaper close to the government describes as volunteer Afghan forces, to fight in Syria. In May 2015, Defa Press, a news agency close to Iran’s armed forces, reported that the Fatemiyoun had been elevated from a brigade to a division. There are no official public statistics on its size, but according to an interview published in the Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Tasnim News, it has about 14,000 fighters.
Analysts argue that this latest revelation should serve as a wake-up call for Western governments. Addressing the root causes of Islamic extremism, strengthening intelligence-sharing mechanisms and reinforcing counterterrorism efforts are essential steps to combat terrorism.
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