Could the IDF Train Iranians to Fight the Regime with Iranian Weapons?

Over the years, the IDF has managed to acquire large amounts of Iranian weaponry that had been sent to both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and that the IDF subsequently seized. Instead of simply storing those weapons, the Middle East Forum fellow Elliot Nazar suggests that young Iranian protesters could be trained to use those weapons and turn them on the Iranian regime’s enforcers. More on this potential use of captured Iranian weapons by opponents of the regime can be found here: “Arm Iran’s Youth,” by Elliot Nazar, Middle East Forum, January 5, 2026

Following the twelve-day war in June 2025 between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran, many outside observers expected ordinary young Iranians to rise and overthrow the regime. Instead, the clerical leadership deployed security forces to crush domestic civil unrest, arresting and executing individuals on false charges of working for Israel. As the Jewish state prepares for another round of conflict with the Islamic Republic, it should focus on crippling the regime’s security forces by arming Iran’s youth.

For decades, the Islamic Republic has relied on its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its paramilitary Basij, and other internal security forces to quell peaceful student and youth-led protests with impunity. For many young Iranians, these events have led to the conclusion that peaceful protest, online activism, and international sanctions cannot break the regime’s grip on power. However, some among Iran’s youth believe that only armed resistance can impose costs on the regime and lead to its eventual ouster.

ProPublica described the case of a young Iranian college student from a working-class area near Tehran, whom the Basij detained and tortured alongside his classmates. The experience left him angry against the regime and, following his release, he allegedly helped sabotage Iranian air defense and missile infrastructure during the twelve-day war….

This college student’s fury with the mistreatment, including torture, of himself and his fellows by the Basij led him to help Israel during the 12-day war in June, by sabotaging “air defense and missile infrastructure.” Nor was he the only Iranian to help the IDF as a way to weaken the Islamic Republic.

Later in the month, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet prevented another Iranian effort to smuggle large quantities of advanced weapons, including rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, sniper rifles, and explosive devices, to terrorist operatives in the West Bank, while also thwarting a drone-based attempt to smuggle pistols from Jordan into Israel.

All of these IDF seizures of vast quantities of weapons that Iran had tried to smuggle to terrorists in Lebanon, Gaza, and Judea could now be put to good use by being transferred to Iranian dissidents, chiefly the young, who are prepared to fight the regime’s enforcers. These weapons, Elliot Nazar argues, could be distributed to young opponents of the Tehran regime, whom Israeli instructors would then train in their use. And then these Iranians, armed with, and trained to use, Iranian weapons, could take on the Basij and the IRGC when they attempt to violently suppress the demonstrators.

The protests in Iran have spread to more than 100 cities across the country, and show no signs of diminishing. What began as a protest against the sudden collapse in the value of the rial, and a rise in the price of fuel due to a cutback in subsidies, quickly morphed from being a protest against a wretched economy into a political attack on the regime itself, on its very existence, with chants such as “Death to the Dictator” and calls of support for “Reza, Reza Pahlavi.” Those who are described as “rebellious youth” are ready to fight, but they need weapons and training. Israel has the weapons — warehouses full of Iranian weapons that the IDF has seized over the years — and it could train young Iranians in their use. Farsi-speaking IDF soldiers could surreptitiously enter Iran, bringing with them Iranian weapons that had previously been seized, for distribution to those prepared to fight the Iranian state’s Basij enforcers. And they should be able, with the help of locals to guide them, to set up small camps where they can train those would-be fighters in the use of those weapons. When the Basij and the IRGC, already demoralized, with some of their number having refused to use force against the protesters, while others, still more devastating to the regime, have joined the anti-regime demonstrations, have to face armed insurrection, they may simply fade away. Why die for a regime that has lost all legitimacy?