{"id":2186,"date":"2016-04-30T12:24:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T17:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=2186"},"modified":"2016-05-03T18:25:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T23:25:30","slug":"news-iran-news-iran-to-recruit-teenage-boys-to-fight-in-syria-ncri-released-a-translated-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/2186\/","title":{"rendered":"News – Iran News Iran to recruit teenage boys to fight in Syria, NCRI released a translated video"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2016429162954760449181_A-man-carries-a-child-after-airstrikes-hit-Aleppo-\"<\/a>The Washington Times<\/strong>– Iran has begun to ask its teenage boys to volunteer to fight in Syria in a sign the hard-line Islamic regime\u2019s military is suffering rising casualties in the five-year war and needs a morale boost, an opposition group says.
\nThe National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI <\/a>) released a translated video it says was produced by the Tehran\u2019s Bassij Music House and was shown over several days on state-run television this month.
\nThe selling pitch to youngsters: You will be defending sacred Shiite shrines in Syria and will position yourselves to invade Israel, whose destruction is an Iranian regime priority.
\nThe four-minute clip shows a group of boys in a courtyard, with three of them singing to another boy they are trying to recruit as he watches from a window. The singers are dressed in camouflage and combat boots. On camera, they tie on a cloth headband to complete the warrior look.
\n\u201cThis promotional clip first of all manifests the anti-human nature of the regime which seeks to even mobilize the children of its own loyalists as cannon fodder,\u201d said Shahin Gobadi, an NCRI official based in Paris.
\n\u201cWe monitor the Iranian regime\u2019s state media thoroughly. Our people noticed this on the state media, and then our people were able to download it from one of the regime\u2019s websites.\u201d
\nIran is already sending unconventional fighters to Syria to protect its ally, Bashar Assad.
\nThe BBC reported this month that the regime has rounded up, or recruited, thousands of ethnic Afghans and sent them to Syria. Some quit the battlefield and ended up in refugee streams to Europe.
\n\u201cThe men, who are mainly ethnic Hazaras, are recruited from impoverished and vulnerable migrant communities in Iran, and sent to join a multi-national Shia Muslim militia \u2014 in effect a \u2018Foreign Legion\u2019 \u2014 that Iran has mobilized to support Bashar al-Assad,\u201d the BBC said.
\nThe Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the dominant military force in Iran, has made major commitments to fight wars in Syria and Iraq.
\nThe NCRI said the Guard Corps has taken heavy casualties in battling a range of rebel groups, including the al Qaeda-connected Nusra Front and the Islamic State terror army. At least one prominent Guard general was killed in Syria during the battle for the city of Aleppo.
\nTehran contends its troops are only advising the Syrians. The NCRI opposition group says there are 8,000 Iranians in Syria fighting on the government\u2019s side. Outside experts have put the number much lower, at about 2,000.
\nOn Thursday, Aleppo, Syria\u2019s largest city, was turned once again into a major battleground in the civil war. Airstrikes and artillery killed more than 60 people in the past 24 hours, including dozens at a hospital in a rebel-held neighborhood.
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Children walk amid the rubble of destroyed buildings after air strikes on the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Kalasa in Aleppo
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Aid agencies warn that Aleppo is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster with the collapse of a two-month cease-fire and stalled peace talks.
\nThe intensified violence \u2014 by far the worst since the partial cease-fire began \u2014 coincides with reports of a military buildup outside Aleppo that many fear is a prelude for a government attempt to force a complete siege of the city\u2019s neighborhoods.
\nBattle-hardened residents were shocked by the bloodshed. Opposition activists accused the government of carpet-bombing rebel-controlled areas.
\nVideo posted online by opposition activists showed rescuers pulling bodies from shattered buildings in the rebel neighborhoods of Sukkari, Kallasa and Bustan al-Qasr.
\nChief opposition negotiator Mohammed Alloush blamed the government of\u00a0Assad for the violence, saying it shows \u201cthe environment is not conducive to any political action.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat is happening is a crime of ethnic and sectarian cleansing by all means,\u201d Mr. Alloush told The Associated Press, adding it was an attempt by Assad\u2019s government to drive residents from Aleppo.
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A civil defence member carries a child to safety after she is pulled from the rubble in Aleppo
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Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov also denied bombing any hospitals in Aleppo, saying its aircraft have not flown any missions in the region for several days.
\nCol. Steve Warren, the spokesman for the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS, said fighter jets from the international coalition have not carried out any airstrikes in Aleppo in the past 24 hours.
\nAbout 200 civilians have been killed in the past week in Syria, nearly half of them around Aleppo.
\nWith the U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva completely deadlocked, Syrians are watching the escalating violence with dread, fearing that Aleppo is likely to be the focus of the next, more vicious phase of the 5-year-old war.
\nMr. Gobadi said the recruitment pitch for teenagers is the first time Tehran has turned to children volunteers since its long war with Iraq in the 1980s.
\nThe song encouraging teenage volunteers refers to their supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and to Shiite shrines in Syria.
\n\u201cOn my leader [Khamenei\u2019s] orders I am ready to give my life,\u201d the boys sing, according to an NCRI translation. \u201cThe goal is not just to free Iraq and Syria; My path is through the sacred shrine, but my goal is to reach Jerusalem. \u2026 I don\u2019t regret parting from my country; In this just path I am wearing my martyrdom shroud. \u2026 From Mashhad [northeast Iran], I will walk on foot to Damascus. I am like the bird who flocks to the sacred shrine.\u201d
\nThe headband is tradition, Mr. Gobadi said, explaining why they done it during the song. Historic Shiite shrines are located near Damascus.
\nMuch of the Iranian ground-forces fighting has been near Aleppo, to the north of Damascus.
\n\u201cSince the Iran-Iraq War it has been customary for the IRGC and Iranian paramilitary forces to wrap a piece of cloth on their heads,\u201d he said. \u201cThey write religious sentences or verses on them as a sort of slogan. In this particular case the loose translation is that \u2018we defend the sacred shrine with all we have.\u2019 In the Iranian regime\u2019s lexicon, \u2018defending the sacred shrine\u2019 is the equivalent of deploying the forces of the IRGC and, more recently, the regular army to Syria to defend the Assad regime as it massacres the people of Syria. This is while the majority of the Iranian regime\u2019s casualties are near Aleppo, which is several hundred kilometers away from the holy Shiite shrines near Damascus.\u201d
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The damage at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)-backed Al Quds hospital after it was hit by airstrikes in a rebel-held area of Aleppo<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Guard Corps was founded after the 1979 revolution to protect the Islamic regime and carry out its edicts. Since then it has grown into the country\u2019s most powerful military force at about 150,000 personnel, according to the United States Institute of Peace. The Corps has its own navy and a foreign intervention arm known as the Quds Force.
\nWith a large army of about 350,000, plus the Guard Corps, it raises the question of why Tehran would urge teenagers to join the fight.
\nMr. Gobadi said the bid to attract teenage volunteers is designed to boost morale among deployed troops and at home, where there is dissent against Iran\u2019s direct involvement in a foreign war.
\nIran has also recruited thousands of foreigner fighters from Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon to go to Syria, he said.
\nThe BBC report said thousands of Afghans have been recruited into the Guard\u2019s all-Afghan Fatemioun Brigade. Like the boys\u2019 song, the call to arms is to protect Shiite shrines.
\nThe network quoted Professor Scott Lucas of Birmingham University as saying, \u201cThe Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps decided that the Syrian military could not succeed on their own. The front lines were too depleted and men were trying to avoid conscription.\u201d
\nIran acknowledged this month that it sent new commandos to Syria from the army\u2019s elite 65th Brigade.<\/p>\n

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Source: The Washington Times, 29 APRIL 2016<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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