During the brutal Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), thousands of Iranian children were sent to the front lines. Many volunteered after being influenced by state propaganda, religious ideology, and societal pressure. 

Child Soldiers: The Untold Story of Iran-Iraq’s Frontline Children, is a documentary directed and produced by acclaimed Iranian director and actress Pegah Ahangarani for BBC Persian. Through deeply personal testimonies, former child soldiers share their untold stories, accompanied by previously unseen footage from the Iran-Iraq War. For the first time in four decades, they recount memories they have never shared, even with their own families.

The Iran-Iraq War, one of the longest and deadliest conflicts of the past century, not only claimed countless lives but also robbed thousands of children and adolescents of their innocence, thrusting them into the horrors of war.

0:00 Iran’s child soldiers
03:52 The untold story of child soldiers
04:13 The start of the Iran-Iraq War 
05:00 Ideology and propaganda
07:15 Khomeini's influence on child recruits
09:03 Volunteers in minefields 
09:42 Encouraging children to join the war in schools
11:20 The promise of martyrdom
12:22 Deciding to go to war as a child
15:41 First encounters in the Iran-Iraq war
17:03 Children losing friends in war
18:50 Child soldier in a minefield 
20:00 Archival interviews of child soldiers 
20:40 ‘Finding my younger brother on the frontline’
22:26 How Iran defied the ban on child soldiers
23:44 Interviewing child soldiers
26:49 Learning on the job
28:17 Memories of a combat operation
30:47 Losing a schoolfriend on the frontline
32:42 The death of a brother
34:08 The horrors of life on the frontline for a child soldier
36:50 The lives of former child soldiers
38:40 Living with the injuries of war
40:52 UN Resolution 598 and the end of the Iran-Iraq war 
44:35 Life after the Iran-Iraq war
48:15 Physical and psychological mementos of war
50:40 Epilogue