First of all I don't question the use of child soldiers on suicide missions in the war. Those are not only well documented but Iran was even proud of it and keeps doing propaganda with the examples of Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh and others.
One of the stories I keep hearing and reading about is the story of the 500 000 plastic keys imported from Taiwan. Which they would give the children and tell them that would be able to unlock paradise with those once they have died on the battlefield. It is even mentioned in the autobiographical graphical novel/ animation movie Persepolis.
All the "sources" seem to quote each other without or just claim it without backing it. There are no where to be seen on the footage of child soldiers that I could find. Shouldn't there be pictures of the keys around as well?
In the commentary of an article about the issue one person claimed that there is a popular Shia prayer book called Mafatih-ul-Jinan which means "Key to Paradise". They said it was often taken into battle. Could this be a huge misunderstanding?
So can anyone give me reliable source on this or point at where to look for it?
If you want to send me sources in Farsi my responses will be slower because I am really bad at reading it and would have to ask someone to help me with it first.
I will also visit Tehran in a few months and I speak Farsi. So you could even tell point me to a place there.
There are no sources, because it never happened. This was propaganda that has been repeated so often it became "true." There are various versions, ie that the keys were made in Iran, or in China, or in Taiwain. One version says they cleared the mines to allow human wave attacks, another says to open the way for armor (Kids running across minefields could not trip landmines intended for tanks, which are designed not to be so easily tripped)
There were underage fighters at the time, as with many wars. (In the US a 13-year old won the Medal of Valor for fightin the Japanese.) When the war started, Iran's military was disorganized and the country was in anarchy. Untrained volunteers often were left doing the fighting. Nobody was checking IDs.
This is probably what really happened: They were in fact used to clear mines from captured territory, using standard mine-clearing techniques (poking a stick in the dirt) and not by running through the minefields
