Iran Trains Civilians With Rifles as Trump War Threats Mount
SkimNews Take
The public display of advanced weaponry at a civilian event normalizes military power within daily life, integrating defense capabilities into the fabric of national identity alongside social traditions.
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- Iran's government has made weapons demonstrations a regular feature of Tehran life, with Revolutionary Guard members teaching civilians to handle Kalashnikov-style rifles, military vehicles mounted with Soviet-era machine guns rolling through the capital, and a ballistic missile — the same type that struck Israel — placed on the stage of a mass wedding.
- The regime has enlisted more than 30 million volunteers through its "Janfada" (self-sacrifice) program, a figure that cannot be independently verified and has not produced visible mass mobilization, though hardliners have urged families to send boys as young as 12 to Revolutionary Guard checkpoints — a move Amnesty International called a war crime.
- Weapons training sessions in Tehran, which separate men and women into different classes, are led by Basij force members who issue "Janfada" cards certifying basic rifle competence, though the training was described as rudimentary — at one session a participant struggled to insert a magazine and pointed the unloaded barrel at others.
- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi compared footage of young boys handling assault rifles to "child hostage-taking and arming by groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, and militias in Sudan and Congo."
- The displays serve a dual domestic purpose: projecting strength abroad while reassuring hardliners, entertaining a public facing mass layoffs and soaring food and medicine prices, and deterring new protests after the January crackdown that activists say killed over 7,000 people and detained tens of thousands.
- President Trump has fueled the climate by suggesting U.S. forces could seize Iran's enriched uranium stockpile by force and previously arming Kurdish fighters linked to anti-government protesters, according to Iranian accounts, while threatening to restart war if Tehran refuses to release its grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
Why it matters: The spectacle of ballistic missiles at weddings and children handling rifles signals the Islamic Republic is simultaneously mobilizing for potential U.S. conflict and arming its base against domestic unrest — a dual-use strategy that makes the 30 million unverified volunteers a metric worth watching, since any actual call-up would represent an unprecedented expansion of Iran's paramilitary footprint beyond the established Basij.
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