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Pope Benedict XVI, who went from Hitler Youth to advancing Catholic-Jewish relations, dies at 95
(JTA) — Jewish groups are among those marking the death of Benedict XVI, the Catholic pontiff who died Saturday at 95, a decade after shocking the world by becoming the first pope since the Middle Ages to resign.
“It is with great sadness that I learned today that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has passed away,” Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said in a statement issued Saturday. “He was a towering figure of the Roman Catholic Church, both as pope and before that as the cardinal who gave the Catholic-Jewish relationship solid theological underpinning and enhanced understanding.”
During his eight years as pope, Benedict took many steps to advance Catholic-Jewish relations. visiting synagogues and Israel and condemning antisemitism on multiple occasions.
But he also reintroduced liturgy praying for the conversion of Jews, accepted back into the church an excommunicated priest who denied the Holocaust and never completely satisfied some who wished to see him more fully denounce his own Nazi past.
Born Joseph Ratzinger in Germany in 1927, Benedict spent a portion of his teenage years in the Hitler Youth organization, something that was mandatory for boys in Germany at the time and that he explained as necessary to obtain a tuition discount at his seminary. Those who knew him at the time attested after his election as pope in 2005 that his participation was reluctant, and Jewish groups who worked with him after the war said he had long worked to rectify the association.
“Though as a teenager he was a member of the Hitler Youth, all his life Cardinal Ratzinger has atoned for the fact,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement after his election as pope.
As priest and professor of theology in the 1960s, Ratzinger took part in the Second Vatican Council, a policy meeting of church leaders, as a theological advisor. It was at that council that the church’s leadership rejected centuries of Catholic dogma and declared that the Jewish people should not be blamed for the death of Jesus. Their 1965 declaration, known as Nostra Aetate, recast the church’s relations with the Jewish community.
Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, is remembered as the first pope to visit a synagogue and, upon his ascension to the papacy, Benedict continued that tradition, making a habit of visiting with local Jewish communities on several of his international trips.
Pope Benedict XVI greets guests beside Rabbi Arthur Schneier (R) during a visit to the Park East Synagogue, April 18, 2008, in New York City. (Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2008, on a papal visit to the United States, Benedict visited New York’s Park East Synagogue on the eve of Passover, in the first visit by a pope to an American synagogue.
“Shalom! It is with joy that I come here, just a few hours before the celebration of your Pesach, to express my respect and esteem for the Jewish community in New York City,” the pope said to the congregation, according to the church’s records. “I find it moving to recall that Jesus, as a young boy, heard the words of Scripture and prayed in a place such as this.”
The next year, Benedict visited Israel, in a trip that was largely focused around the common roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Related: Timeline of Pope Benedict XVI and the Jews (2013)
Upon Benedict’s resignation in 2013, he was praised by Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi. “During his period there were the best relations ever between the church and the chief rabbinate, and we hope that this trend will continue,” said the rabbi, Yona Metzger. “I think he deserves a lot of credit for advancing inter-religious links the world.”
Despite the praise, Benedict’s papacy ignited multiple episodes of criticism from Jews alarmed by the effects of his religious conservatism.
Early in his papacy, Benedict allowed for the expanded use of the Tridentine Mass — the pre-Vatican II Catholic liturgy also known as the Latin Mass — which includes a Good Friday prayer that many view as antisemitic because it prays for the conversion of Jews to Christianity. (Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, has curtailed the use of the Latin Mass, though not specifically because of its language about Jews.)
The ADL’s then-leader, Abraham Foxman, was among many Jewish leaders to condemn Benedict’s move.
‘We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday mass, it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted,’ Foxman said. “’It is the wrong decision at the wrong time. It appears the Vatican has chosen to satisfy a right-wing faction in the church that rejects change and reconciliation.”
In response to the criticism, Benedict altered the Good Friday liturgy to drop a reference to the “blindness” of the Jews, but he maintained language praying for Jews to convert to Christianity.
Benedict also drew criticism for his refusal to acknowledge the Catholic church’s role in the Holocaust, and in particular, the role of the pope at the time, Pius XII — whose path to sainthood Benedict approved in 2009.
Pope Benedict XVI talks to Italian Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni in Rome’s main synagogue, Jan. 17, 2010. In his remarks there, Benedict said the Roman Catholic Church provided “often hidden and discreet” support for Jews during the Holocaust. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)
Pius has long been accused by Jewish groups of at best remaining silent, and at worst, being “Hitler’s pope” as the Holocaust raged across Europe. While Catholics were involved in many cases of rescue across the continent, initiatives coming from the Vatican itself often applied only to practicing Catholics of Jewish descent, or required Jews to convert to Catholicism.
After the war, Pius’ Vatican sheltered Ante Pavelic, the exiled leader of the Ustaše regime in the former Independent State of Croatia, a Catholic supremacist movement and Nazi puppet state that implemented the Holocaust in Western Yugoslavia. Jasenovac, the third-largest concentration camp in Europe, was built under the Ustaše rule and was the site of death for at least 100,000 people, including between 12,000 and 20,000 Jews.
The Vatican has long maintained that Pius worked to save Jews. Pius, Benedict said in 2008, “acted in a secret and silent way because, given the realities of that complex historical moment, he realized that it was only in this way that he could avoid the worst and save the greatest possible number of Jews.”
Benedict faced the decision of whether to declare Pius “venerable,” a crucial step in the path to sainthood. After initially deferring, he made the declaration in 2009. Now, the decision about whether Pius will be beatified, or declared a saint, could hinge on the contents of an archive that the Vatican is in the process of opening that includes materials about Pius’ handling of the Holocaust.
“The Pope at War,” a recent book by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Kertzer, the son of a rabbi, draws on these new archives to make the case that Pius largely ignored pleas from Jews (while keeping a secret back channel to Hitler); Pius’ advisor used antisemitic language in urging him not to act on behalf of the Jews and the pope personally intervened to prevent Jewish children and their parents from being reunited, Kertzer concluded.
Benedict, who had access to the archive, worked to heal friction with the International Society of Saint Pius XII, a conservative faction within the Vatican that named itself after the wartime pope and added the “Saint” even though he lacked the title.
In early 2009, Benedict removed the excommunication of four priests from the society. Among them was Holocaust denier Richard Williamson, who claimed the Nazis’ use of gas chambers to be a lie.
German Jewish leaders called Benedict’s decision “a slap in the face for the Jewish community.”
“The result of this move is very simple: to give credence to a man who is a Holocaust denier, which means that the sensitivity to us as Jews is not what it should be,” Elie Wiesel said at the time.
“The Vatican has done far more than set back Vatican-Jewish relations,” the scholar (and current U.S. antisemitism monitor) Deborah Lipstadt wrote at the time. “It has made itself look like it is living in the darkest of ages.”
Benedict said he had not known about Williamson’s views and pressed him to recant them, but Williamson did not; the pope later said he had mishandled the situation.
Months later, during his visit to Israel, Benedict spoke outside of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum. Though he denounced antisemitism in his remarks, he did not mention the words Germany or Nazi, nor did he reference any church involvement or his own experience in the Hitler Youth, or refer to the deaths of Europe’s Jews as murder.
Benedict ultimately refused to enter the museum, due to its negative depiction of Pope Pius XII.
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Trump Labels Carlson a ‘Low-IQ Person’ After Criticism on Iran, Says ‘I Don’t Respond to His Calls’
Tucker Carlson speaks on first day of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
President Donald Trump on Tuesday lambasted far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson, one of his longtime supporters turned outspoken critic, as the US-Israeli war against the Islamic regime in Iran continued to fragment online discourse among right-wing influencers.
“Tucker’s a low-IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Trump said in an interview with New York Post national security reporter Caitlin Doornbos when asked about Carlson’s condemnations of his Easter message promising massive destruction on Iran.
“He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him,” Trump said of Carlson. “I like dealing with smart people, not fools.”
On Monday, in his continued efforts to frame himself as a devout defender of Christian faith, Carlson released a more than two-hour long podcast on X and YouTube, announcing it by saying that “desecrating Easter was the first step toward nuclear war. Christians need to understand where Trump is taking us.”
Carlson took issue in part with Trump’s social media post the prior day, Easter Sunday, issuing a warning to the Iranian regime.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F**kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump posted, referring to the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global shipping that Iran has effectively closed amid conflict with the US and Israel.
In addition to attacking the president, Carlson criticized multiple faith traditions and Christian Zionist religious figures including White House senior adviser Paula White and Franklin Graham, CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and of Samaritan’s Purse. Carlson also maligned the megachurch movement and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He has previously called Christian Zionism a heresy and said that he disliked its proponents “more than anybody,” remarks for which he later offered an apology.
Carlson’s 40-minute opening monologue framed his opposition to Trump in theological terms, asserting that Christians should have opposed the president’s effort to seize Venezuela’s oil, saying, “That’s not acceptable for Christians. In fact, that’s unacceptable for Americans or any civilized people because taking other people’s stuff by force cannot be allowed.” Carlson called Trump’s decision wrong “under the American legal code, but it’s also wrong under the Christian legal code.”
Carlson also argued that during Trump’s inauguration, he didn’t take the oath of office with his hand on the Bible.
“That should have been maybe a clue that we need to pause and think about,” the online media personality added, claiming it “became clear that maybe [Trump] didn’t put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what’s inside that book. And what’s inside that book are limits on human behavior.”
Carlson condemned Trump’s Truth Social posting on Sunday, calling his words “maybe the most real thing this president has ever done and also the most revealing on every level. It is vile on every level.”
On Sunday, former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) also used religious rhetoric to reject Trump’s use of the phrase “Praise be to Allah,” which appeared to be in jest.
“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness,” Greene wrote on X in a post that has since received over 9.6 million views. “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit. I’m not defending Iran but let’s be honest about all of this.”
Greene then referenced the Strait of Hormuz, arguing it’s closed “because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling for decades, that any moment Iran would develop a nuclear weapon. You know who has nuclear weapons? Israel. They are more than capable of defending themselves without the US having to fight their wars, kill innocent people and children, and pay for it.”
Returning to religion, Greene wrote “our President is not a Christian and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians. Christians in the administration should be pursuing peace.”
On Tuesday, Greene called for members of the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution to remove Trump from power following his threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back.”
Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has also advocated Trump’s removal, asking a guest on his Monday InfoWars podcast, “How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” On March 31, Jones said that Trump “does look sick … the brain’s not doing too hot. And so, we just cut bait on Trump, and we just mobilize against the Democrats.”
Other influential far-right media figures who previously spent years boosting Trump have also now called for his removal. On Tuesday in response to the same Trump threat, far-right podcaster Candace Owens wrote that “the 25th amendment needs to be invoked. He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness.”
The 25th Amendment states that if key government leaders determine that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” then the vice president “shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting president.”
On Tuesday, conservative radio host Mark Levin labeled those calling for the 25th Amendment’s use as “the Woke Reich neo-fascists.”
Owens had reposted Carlson’s podcast condemning Trump.
On Sunday in response to Trump’s post, Owens wrote on X in a post seen by at least 3.8 million people that “this is a satanic administration. We all realize that satanic Zionists occupy the White House and Congress needs to move to have the Mad King Trump removed.” She added, “All of our lives may depend upon other countries realizing that Trump is deeply unwell and surrounded by religious fanatics who have convinced him that he is a messiah. We are in uncharted territory. Leaders worldwide need to act accordingly.”
On Tuesday, Owens accused Trump of involvement in the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Resharing an X posting by Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian asserting his willingness to die in defense of the Islamic regime, Owens wrote, “The Iranian President tweets that he is willing [to] sacrifice his own life for his people. Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice Charlie Kirk and is willing to sacrifice every American life and livelihood for Greater Israel. Who is the animal again?”
Joe Kent, the former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center and a conspiracy theorist ally of Owens, wrote on Tuesday in response to Trump’s threats of civilizational eradication that the president “believes he is threatening Iran with destruction, but it is America that now stands in danger. If he attempts to eradicate Iranian civilization, the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilizing force in the world, but as an agent of chaos — effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.”
Kent reposted Carlson’s podcast too and came under fire from CNN’s Jake Tapper for also sharing Iranian propaganda falsely suggesting that the United States intentionally sought to kill its own downed pilot rather than rescue him.
Ann Coulter, the right-wing polemicist who authored 2016’s In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!, has also turned against the president, writing on Tuesday that “Trump is going to set off the wildest rush for nuclear weapons the world has ever seen. Should go well.”
Coulter wrote in response to Trump’s Sunday message: “I really wish ‘legal experts’ hadn’t screamed bloody murder about every little thing Trump did, so they could speak with authority now that he’s actually committing war crimes.”
Antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes has also jumped on board the anti-Trump bandwagon.
“I’ve been saying this for the past couple of days: You have to understand that all Trump does is lie. It’s by design. This is the function of rhetoric from the White House,” Fuentes said on April 1 on his Rumble show. “But that’s the Trump doctrine, which is you flood the zone, you saturate the information space with disinformation or contradictory information, and the purpose of it is to throw your enemies and even your allies off balance.”
Fuentes added, “We are stuck. We made an attempt to destroy the Iranian regime and we failed. We took a shot and we missed. And what this has allowed Iran to do is seize the Strait of Hormuz and take a fifth of the world’s energy hostage. And we have no ability to take it back. Because the regime survived, it is now actually stronger. So, it’s not going anywhere. And what’s more, Iran prepared for exactly this scenario.”
Fuentes’ so-called “Groyper” movement promotes antisemitism, racism, rape, and support for Hamas. Proponents seek to infiltrate the Republican Party and subvert it from within, a tactic Fuentes has instructed. Conservative journalist Rod Dreher reported in The Free Press that his sources have told him that approximately 30-40 percent of Gen-Z Republican staffers sympathized with Groyperism.
While initial polling showed firm Republican support for Trump and Israel’s efforts to crush the Islamic regime in Iran, new research indicates diminished enthusiasm. A poll from YouGov and The Economist released on March 31 showed that while 62 percent of Republicans supported the conflict, that figure divided between pro-MAGA Republicans (79 percent) and non-MAGA Republicans (33 percent.) Self-proclaimed MAGA Republicans comprise roughly twice the number of non-MAGA Republicans.
Polling also shows that a majority of younger Republicans, a cohort more heavily influenced by Owens and Fuentes, now reject the war, with only 49 percent supporting Trump’s actions.
Tuesday wasn’t the first time that Trump blasted Carlson.
“Tucker has lost his way,” the president told ABC’s Jonathan Karl last month. “MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”
Carlson told Status News editor Oliver Darcy that “there are times I get annoyed with Trump, right now definitely included. But I’ll always love him no matter what he says about me.”
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Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
President Donald Trump has backed himself into a corner on Iran. His increasingly apocalyptic threats — including a Tuesday morning social media post that warned “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not accede to his terms — make that much clear. Trump is looking for any way out of this war that will let him not just avoid blame, but claim superiority.
One uncomfortable possibility for how he might do so: follow the lead of far-right pundits, and pivot to blame the Jews.
We know how Trump handles failure. The 2019 documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? shows a 20-something Trump learning his strategies at the knee of the late, disgraced titular attorney, who instructed him never to admit error or accept responsibility for his failures. “Donald Trump is Roy Cohn,” Matt Tyrnauer, the documentary’s director, told NPR.
The techniques break down to this: deflect, attack, deny.
Trump has tried a combination of them as the war has defied a quick conclusion. He has denied reality, declaring victory two weeks ago. He has lashed out at the media for supposedly undermining the war effort through clear-eyed reporting, going so far as to have the FCC threaten to revoke broadcast licenses for war coverage he finds objectionable. He promised in an Easter Sunday message to bomb civilian infrastructure if Iran doesn’t “open the f— Strait” of Hormuz to maritime traffic.
But what if ramping up attacks won’t work? What if it becomes impossible to deny reality, as gas prices soar higher, American casualties pile up, and taxpayers see themselves shelling out more billions for a war they don’t understand?
Trump could look into a camera and tell the American people that he miscalculated. That the buck stops with him, and that as commander in chief he and he alone made the decision to go to war, and the war’s successes and failures are on him.
Or he could turn back to the first of those Cohn strategies, and deflect. And the easiest culprit to deflect blame to is, clearly, Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long pushed for a military strike on Iran. And a subset of erstwhile Trump supporters, including commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens — both of whom have long records of spreading antisemitism — have been laying the groundwork for Trump to take advantage of that widely known fact for a last, desperate bit of narrative spin. They and their ilk have claimed that Israel and its American Jewish supporters, including, bizarrely, Chabad, pushed Trump into the unpopular war. Trump could easily slide into the nefarious narrative they have prepared for him, and cast himself as the innocent manipulated by a foreign government and its American agents.
The consequences of the president of the United States placing the blame for what could be an unpopular, failed, costly and deadly war on Israel and, by extension, Jewish Americans, are unforeseeable, and existentially frightening. They are also consequences that, given Trump’s track record, we need to consider.
Because here’s what we know about Trump: He has never accepted blame for anything during his presidency.
Confronted in 2020 with the suggestion that his administration had failed to effectively address the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump said, “No, I don’t take responsibility at all,” then blamed former President Barack Obama. When his ill-conceived tariffs sent the stock market into a nosedive, forcing the administration to reverse course and pause the tariff to avoid a market collapse, Trump and his spokespeople said that was the plan all along. “I know what the hell I’m doing,” he said. While 48% of Americans blame Trump for the spike in gas prices since the start of the Iran war, he has deflected, posting that the increase is “a very small price to pay… only fools would think differently!”
If Trump wants to get out of the war without following through on his threats to commit mass war crimes — which, despite his evident glee in playing bully, he may — he will need to cast blame in a way that makes him look like the reasonable party.
To those Jewish Trump supporters who think there is no way Trump would throw Israel, and by extension Jews, under the bus, consider this — he’s already tried.
After Israel’s March attack on an Iranian natural gas facility, which outraged Gulf allies and sent gas prices soaring, Trump claimed the U.S. “knew nothing” about the Israeli plans. But Israeli and American officials later confirmed that was a lie, and that Trump himself “green-lit” the operation.
Trump hung Israel out to dry once, and it’s far from inconceivable that he could try again.
Never mind that blaming Israel would make no sense. Successive administrations, including the first Trump administration, chose not to pursue wars with Iran because, well, the U.S. can freely choose when and when not to go to war — and Trump is the decider. Netanyahu has not been the world leader threatening civilizational destruction on Truth Social. And American Jews, crucially, oppose the current war. According to a GBAO Strategies poll commissioned by J Street, 60% of American Jews opposed U.S. military intervention in Iran.
But think of how easy it would be for Trump to, say, announce that the U.S. has accomplished its goals, then suggest Israel has been holding out for more wins, and that he’s told Netanyahu the U.S. is done fighting on Israel’s behalf?
If Trump were to go there, it wouldn’t be the first time Jews found themselves blamed for an unpopular war. The first Russian-language editions of the antisemitic forgeries The Protocols of the Elders of Zion sought to scapegoat the Jews for the country’s 1905 defeat in the Russo-Japanese war. Following World War I, German antisemites promulgated the “stab-in-the-back” myth that Jews and Communists conspired to undermine the war effort.
American Jews and their institutions, already targeted as a result of the Gaza war and increasingly unhinged right-wing antisemitism, could be put in even greater danger by the president’s lifelong inability to take responsibility for the consequences of his decisions. To quote Trump, only fools would think differently.
The post Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Calls on Children, Civilians to Form Human Shields Around Power Plants Amid Trump Threats
Iranian citizens, including children, form a human chain around a power plant in Tehran on April 7, 2026, as officials urge civilians to protect key infrastructure amid rising tensions with the US and Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Iranian authorities have urged children, teenagers, and civilians to gather around power plants and other sensitive sites to serve as human shields, in an apparent effort to raise the cost of potential US and Israeli strikes on Iran’s infrastructure.
The call came as US President Donald Trump’s deadline of Tuesday night for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and accept a ceasefire proposal rapidly approached.
Trump previously warned that if Iran refused to reopen the strait — a critical global shipping chokepoint linking the Persian Gulf to international waters, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil flows — US strikes would destroy the country’s key infrastructure, including bridges and energy facilities including power plants.
“We have a plan according to which every bridge in Iran will be destroyed and every power plant will be bombed by midnight. It will happen within 4 hours if we want,” Trump said during a press conference on Monday.
Trump appeared to escalate his threats on Tuesday.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.
“However,” he added, “now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
In response, Iranian officials issued stark warnings that, should the strikes on Iranian soil go ahead, Tehran would retaliate by targeting infrastructure and other civilian sites in Gulf states hosting US forces, risking a broader escalation across the region.
Even as negotiations remain formally underway, Iranian officials signaled little change in their stance, insisting that Washington’s demands and tone “have not changed” amid ongoing conflict.
“There are no negotiations with the US, which wants Iran to collapse under pressure. We will show flexibility after we see flexibility from the US,” an Iranian official told Reuters.
“Iran will not open [the Strait of Hormuz] in exchange for empty promises,” he continued.
With tensions now approaching a breaking point, Iranian government and military officials have publicly urged civilians to gather near key infrastructure sites to act as a deterrent against potential airstrikes.
During a televised speech on Monday, Alireza Rahimi, Iran’s deputy minister of youth affairs, urged citizens to join the “Iranian youth’s human chain for a bright tomorrow” by gathering around power plants to serve as human shields.
“I call on all youth, athletes, artists, university students, and professors to gather tomorrow, Tuesday, at 2 pm, and form a circle around our power plants, which are national assets and the nation’s capital,” Rahimi said.
“Come regardless of political views, because these facilities belong to the Iranian youth and their future. Let the world see that targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime,” he continued.
Old habits die hard.
In the Iran-Iraq War, this regime deployed children with plastic keys to heaven against Iraqi machine gun fire and to clear minefields. This is a regime which also deployed Iranian and Afghan children alongside the Basij to fight in the Syrian Civil War. https://t.co/vfR3iqZnG5
— Behnam Ben Taleblu بهنام بن طالب لو (@therealBehnamBT) April 7, 2026
In a separate televised message, Hossein Yekta, a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), addressed parents directly and urged them to send their children to sensitive locations and checkpoints.
“Send the children to the checkpoints so they can become men,” he said.
The regime’s use of human shields appears to extend beyond minors, with reports indicating that political prisoners and dual nationals are also being positioned near sensitive sites as part of broader deterrence efforts.
Last month, the IRGC officially lowered the minimum age for war‑related roles to 12 as part of a campaign recruiting children to serve as “Homeland‑Defending Combatants for Iran,” assigning them to patrols, checkpoints, and logistics duties.
For years, Iran has drafted children under 18 into the Basij militia, with Human Rights Watch documenting boys as young as 14 years old killed in combat, revealing a brutal pattern of exploiting children on the battlefield.