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Simply hours earlier than the ceasefire deal went into impact on Tuesday between the U.S. and Iran’s clerical regime to pause preventing for 2 weeks, the regime urged younger youngsters and adults to encompass Iranian power services as human shields in response to President Trump’s menace to wipe out its power infrastructure.
The pondering behind Iran’s regime’s willingness to make use of youngsters and civilians as cannon fodder, in response to observers, is that an American airstrike that kills youngsters or civilians will dramatically sway U.S. public opinion in opposition to the conflict and create a rally-round-the-regime impact in Tehran.
And now with high-level peace talks on account of begin between the U.S. and Iran in Pakistan, Tehran may be seen because the godfather of propaganda in terms of manipulating a lot of the world’s media — much more expert than its terror apprentice forces in Gaza and Lebanon. Yemen and past.
A billboard displaying a portrait of the late Iranian Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes, looms over an empty sq. in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Vahid Salemi/AP Picture)
“Godfather of propaganda”
Lisa Daftari, an Iran knowledgeable, instructed Fox Information Digital that the theocratic state’s exploitation of civilians for his or her conflict goal is a component and parcel of their practically half-century playbook in opposition to the West. “The Islamic Republic is the Godfather of propaganda. It has spent 47 years perfecting the artwork of claiming one factor on the negotiating desk and doing one other within the subject. The Trump administration ought to stroll into these talks with most skepticism. This regime has by no means stored its phrase on its weapons, and there is no motive to imagine this time is completely different.”
She pointed to Tehran’s “document of positioning civilian infrastructure — hospitals, mosques, faculties and now energy crops — as army shields. They did it in Lebanon by means of Hezbollah. They did it in Gaza by means of Hamas. And they’re doing it now on their very own soil, with their very own individuals, below coercion. Iranians who refuse to take part face penalties.”
Daftari, who’s the Editor-in-Chief of the International Desk, added that, “Iran’s regime has by no means hesitated to make use of its personal individuals as a protect. The distinction now’s they’re doing it in entrance of cameras, in actual time, realizing precisely which pictures will make prime-time information around the globe. That is propaganda. And the two-week ceasefire simply gave them extra time to govern the West and proceed on of their narrative warfare.”
Members of safety forces watch over the group throughout a funeral procession held for IRGC Navy Chief Alireza Tangsiri, alongside different senior naval commanders and their households who have been killed in US-Israeli strikes in late March, on April 1, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Photographs)
Capitalizing on a tragedy
Proper initially of “Operation Epic Fury”, the world’s media was filled with accounts from Iran of an air strike that reportedly hit an Iranian faculty for ladies in the town of Minab Feb. 28. The air strike reportedly killed 175 individuals, most of whom have been youngsters, on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary faculty, in response to the regime. The college was situated on the identical road as buildings utilized by the IRGC. A Pentagon investigation was launched in March to look into the allegations {that a} U.S. missile struck the varsity.
Chatting with Fox Information Digital final month, Iranian-American journalist Banafsheh Zand, who has been following the reporting, pointed to the truth that the varsity that has been there for greater than a decade and its reported affiliation with Iran’s army. She stated that whereas the regime claims between 168 fatalities and 180 fatalities, largely ladies between the ages of seven and 12, together with lecturers and oldsters from the varsity, there was no impartial affirmation of the reported casualty figures.
TRUMP’S IRAN CEASEFIRE ROCKED WITHIN HOURS AMID REPORTED MISSILE, DRONE ATTACKS
“There isn’t a affirmation on the variety of individuals, from anybody apart from regime sources,” she stated. “Some individuals within the space stated it was 65 boys. Sixty-five boys? What are 65 boys doing in a ladies’ faculty at 10:30 on a Saturday morning?”
Each Democratic and Republican U.S. administrations have categorised Iran’s regime as a number one state-sponsor of terrorism.
Iranian worshippers maintain up their fingers as indicators of unity with Iran’s former Supreme Chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, throughout an anti-Israeli rally to sentence Israel’s assaults on Iran, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on June 20, 2025. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs)
Fooling the media
Talking on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime,’ on Thursday, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., stated the American media was “basically… carrying water for Iran.”
Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at JINSA, instructed Fox Information Digital, “The regime needs to point out the Iranian those that it’s not weakened regardless of all of the deaths in its management and losses in its arsenals, and to assert legitimacy by displaying it’s profitable in opposition to the everlasting American and Israeli enemies.”
He stated, “Like Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran makes use of civilians as human shields for propaganda functions. It cares nothing for the security and destiny of its personal individuals. It needs to painting the nation as undaunted and prepared to sacrifice for victory. And if civilians are killed, all the higher for the regime’s political objectives… Iran needs to undermine U.S. home help for the conflict by framing it as America doing Israel’s bidding, and through the use of AI-generated disinformation to depict large destruction and casualties at U.S. bases within the Center East.”
The regime suffered a disaster of legitimacy after tens of millions of Iranians poured into the streets in January and demanded the dissolution of the Islamic Republic.
Each the IRGC and Basij — the regime’s road preventing paramilitary troops — performed a key function within the mass homicide of 45,000 Iranian civilians in January, who protested the regime. President Trump stated in his handle to the nation that the regime killed 45,000 individuals. The earlier demise toll was estimated to be over 35,000 individuals.
Iranians collect whereas blocking a road throughout a protest in Tehran, Iran on January 9, 2026. (MAHSA / Center East Photographs / AFP through Getty Photographs)
Ruhe stated, “Because it did earlier than the conflict, it additionally needs to delegitimize protesters and different inside opposition by depicting them as American and Israeli brokers. It may be anticipated to ramp up all of those propaganda efforts through the ceasefire. The US and our companions will probably be a part of this meant viewers, too.”
Utilizing youngsters in conflict
Including to its lethal propaganda combine, the regime freely makes use of baby troopers to attain its objectives. In line with Amnesty International, “Eyewitness accounts and verified audiovisual proof present child soldiers having been deployed at IRGC checkpoints and patrols, armed with weapons, together with AK47pattern rifles.”
Erika Guevara-Rosas, senior director for Analysis, Advocacy, Coverage and Campaigns, for Amnesty said within the report that, “The Iranian authorities are shamelessly encouraging youngsters as younger as 12 to affix an IRGC run army marketing campaign, placing them in grave hazard and violating international law, which prohibits the recruitment and use of youngsters within the army. Recruiting youngsters below 15 into the armed forces constitutes a conflict crime.”
Iranian schoolboys put on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) army uniforms and shout anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans throughout a ceremony marking the forty seventh anniversary of the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution on the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini within the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 1, 2026 (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs)
Jennifer Dyer, a retired commander of U.S. Naval Intelligence, instructed Fox Information “I’d say the remnant of the regime can’t muster sufficient human shields to be doing it in every single place. The persons are too resistant. Protests continued within the nation the final couple of days, and a few reporting on social media indicated a crackdown by the Basij on protesters after the so-called ceasefire was introduced.”
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In late March, a deputy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammad Rasoul Allah Corps of Higher Tehran, Rahim Nadali, declared that the state launched a recruitment marketing campaign referred to as the “Homeland-Defending Combatants for Iran” that’s “open to volunteers” aged 12 and older. The drive to recruit baby troopers befell in mosques and bases of the paramilitary group Basij. The recruitment marketing campaign sought adolescents to affix “combatants defending the homeland.”
Fox Information Digital reached out to Iran’s U.N. Mission in New York for a remark.
