The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson has urged ordinary Americans not to allow their children to be turned "into mercenaries" to die for Israel, after an opinion piece in the Israeli news outlet The Jerusalem Post called on the US to leverage student loans and financial debt to recruit young Americans for an invasion of Iran.
"Americans, ask yourselves one question: Why should your sons and daughters be offered debt forgiveness in exchange for fighting and dying in a war Israel wants continued & expanded?" asked Esmaeil Baqaei in a post on X on Friday.
He was referring to the op-ed by AJ Jaff, which suggested using student loan and credit card debt cancellation to enlist hundreds of thousands of Americans for a potential ground assault on Iran.
"An opinion column in The Jerusalem Post is openly floating exactly that idea: using student-loan and credit-card debt to recruit Americans for war with Iran. Your lives. Your taxes. Someone else’s war. Do not let anyone turn you into the cannon fodder — and the bill — for a war you never chose," Baqaei wrote in a post on X.
"Do not let anyone turn your children into mercenaries for their illegal 'war of choice'."
The response from the Iranian government came after the column argued that current US military personnel numbers are insufficient for an operation against Iran, proposing a debt-relief enlistment programme modelled on historical incentives such as the GI Bill to stimulate voluntary recruitment.
In his arguments, Jaff argued that months of intensive US attacks had not collapsed Iran's military capacity or ended the war, and that a ground invasion would require far more American troops than current strength.
"Recruitment numbers are running below what a ground invasion of Iran would require. Estimates for a successful ground campaign against Iran's 31 provincial commands and its Mosaic Defense Doctrine run between 750,000 and 1.5 million American troops. The current active US Army stands at roughly 452 thousand. The math does not work, obviously," the author stressed in the column.
"The average American aged 18 to 34 carries more than $40,000 in non-mortgage debt across student loans, credit card balances, auto loans, and personal loans, with some estimates go as high as $100,000," he wrote, adding, this is the cohort the Pentagon needs.
About 77 per cent of Americans carry some form of debt. This translates to roughly 250 million to 260 million individuals facing various types of financial liabilities, contributing to a record US household debt of $18.8 trillion. US adults hold an average debt of $63,500.
Baqaei, meanwhile, accompanied his post with a satirical meme referencing the television series Squid Game, describing the proposed military mobilisation as a war driven by Israel that ordinary Americans should not finance with their lives and taxes.
US joined Israel in attacking Iran on February 28, with strikes quickly killing the longtime supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and much of the other top brass as well as hundreds of civilians.
But Iran quickly hit back by exerting control over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passageway through which one-fifth of global oil once sailed, and it has rained missiles and drones on US-allied Gulf Arab monarchies, shattering the oil-rich countries' hard-earned reputation for stability.
Washington and Tehran signed a Pakistan-mediated memorandum of understanding on June 18 concerning freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, but its implementation has stalled amid disagreements over security arrangements in the strait.
