Iranian lawmaker Ahmad Alirezabeigi said the hard-line state militia known as the Basij is governed by regulations that allow it to recruit minors in the ongoing deadly crackdown on protests in the country.

In an interview published Oct. 20 by the Iran-based Rouydad 24 news site, Alirezabeigi was challenged about multiple recent pictures showing baton-wielding teenage boys in riot gear. The lawmaker said Basij authorities are treating the protests the same way they treated the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when children were deployed to the front line.

He raised the example of 12-year-old Hossein Fahmideh, who in the Iranian official narrative famously blew himself up to destroy an invading Iraqi tank in 1980. Fahmideh has been praised by Iranian officials as an exemplary martyr and the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, called the teenager "our leader."

In the ongoing protests, according to the lawmaker, the Basij organization sees the country as "in jeopardy." He suggested that that belief justifies the use of children to quell the unrest. It remains unclear whether their recruitment is due to a security staff shortage in the face of the growing protests.