Our leader: Mohammed Hossein Fahmideh

Mohammed Hossein Fahmideh, was a 13 year old boy who is praised by Iranians as a true patriot. During the Iran-Iraq war he made his decision to leave his home and go to the south of Iran to stop the invasion of the Iraqi army. He fought side by side with the older Iranian soldiers and held the Iraqi troops back despite his young age. Iraqi troops however at one stage pushed the Iranian troops back and at this stage they were going through a very narrow canal. At that point many Iranian troops nearby had been injured/killed by the heavy Iraqi attacks. Hossein knew that his time would be up sooner or later; therefore he grabbed a hand grenade off one of the nearby bodies and pulled the pin out as he ran and jumped underneath an enemy tank, killing himself and disabling the tank. This stopped the Iraqi tank division"s advance. Iraq was supported by and had weapons supplied from more than 10 western countries including USA, France, Germany, Holland, UK, Russia, Brazil etc., and enjoyed the support of the entire Arab World, with the exception of Syria and Libya. Ayatollah Khomeini declared Fahmideh Iranian national hero, calling him "our leader" and a monument to Fahmideh was erected in Tehran, a place of pilgrimage of young Iranians In the years following Hossein"s death, murals where erected throughout Iran, book bags displaying Hossein were sold to children, and a stamp was issued for his memory in 1986.