Hossein Fahmide,[1] (Persian: حسین فهمیده; full name: Mohammed Hossein Fahmideh Persian: محمدحسین فهمیده) (born 6 May 1967 in Qom - 30 October 1980 in Khorramshahr) is considered a hero[2] in Iran and an icon of the Iran-Iraq war. According to his official life story[3] by the Iranian government, he was a 13 year old boy from the city of Qom who, on the outbreak of war in 1980, made his decision[4] to leave his home without his parents knowledge to go to southern Iran to help stopping the invasion of Iran by the Iraqi army.[5] In the besieged city of Khorramshahr, he fought side by side with older Iranian soldiers.[6] At one point, Iraqi forces pushed the Iranian troops back as they were passing through a very narrow canal. Many of the Iranian troops present were either dead or wounded by the heavy Iraqi attacks. Hossein Fahmideh, therefore, took a grenade from a nearby body, pulled the pin out, and jumped underneath an Iraqi tank, killing himself and disabling the tank. This made the Iraqis think that there were landmines put by the Iranians which stopped the Iraqi tank division's advance.
Ayatollah Khomeini declared Fahmideh[7] an Iranian national hero and a monument to Fahmideh was erected on the outskirts of Tehran, a place of pilgrimage of young Iranians.[8][9] In the years following Hossein's death, murals where erected throughout Iran, book bags displaying Hossein were sold to children, and a postage stamp was issued for his memory in 1986.[10]