Iran CSPA Country Profile

CSPA Implementation Tracker

Monitoring U.S. government efforts to leverage arms sales and military assistance to prevent the recruitment and use of child soldiers

Years Listed

Each shaded box corresponds to a year the country appeared on the CSPA list and what types of waivers it received, if any.

Iran has appeared on the CSPA list since 2018, for a total of eight years. The U.S. president has never waived CSPA prohibitions against the provision of U.S. arms sales and military assistance to Iran, but, according to public data, Iran has never been slated to receive any CSPA-relevant arms sales or U.S. military assistance since the law took effect. As a result, U.S. arms sales or military assistance to Iran have likely never been waived or prohibited due to the CSPA.¹

According to the U.S. State Department, Iranian government forces (including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian Basij Resistance Force (Basij)), as well as armed groups that the Iranian government has led or supported (including the Fatemiyoun Brigade, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Abu Fadhl al-Abbas Brigade, and Houthis), have used and recruited Iranian, migrant, and refugee children as child soldiers.² For several years, IRGC and Basij forces have reportedly recruited and used children, often through force or coercion, to fight in Iranian-led militias in Syria, including the Fatemiyoun Brigade.³ The IRGC has established multiple recruiting and training centers in Syria, the largest of which reportedly housed 250 children between the ages of 13 and 18.⁴ Additionally, the Basij forces recruited and used children, some as young as 12 years old, as security and anti-riot forces in Iran between 2022 and 2024.⁵

Since it first appeared on the CSPA list in 2018, the Iranian government has made no effort to prevent its forces from recruiting and using child soldiers, nor has it ever reported efforts to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate child soldiers or to investigate, prosecute, or convict officials complicit in child soldier offenses.⁶ As of March 2025, there continued to be a government policy or pattern of recruiting and using child soldiers into armed groups and a lack of accountability for officials.⁷

For more information, see the U.S. State Department’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report and 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.