The medal is awarded in three grades, typically based on the rank of the recipient.[2]
Recipients
According to Owain Raw-Rees,[3] the medal is awarded in three grades. Senior commanders are typically awarded a first class medal, Colonels and Brigadiers usually receive a second class award, while third class awards are granted to those ranked at or below Lieutenant Colonel.[2] However, these guidelines are not applied strictly.
The first recipient of the Order of Fath, First Class, was Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh, one of three to receive the honour on September 27, 1989.[4] Fahmideh's award was posthumous as he was killed in November 1980 when, as a 13-year-old boy, he was fighting in the Iran–Iraq War. He disabled an Iraqi tank by jumping under it while wearing a belt of grenades from which he had removed the pins.[5][6] In so doing, Fahmideh halted the advance of a line of tanks.[7]: 57 [6][8][9] Khomeini declared Fahmideh a national hero, stating that the "value of [Fahmideh's] little heart is greater than could be described by hundreds of tongues and hundreds of pens"[6][10] and also calling him "our guide" who "threw himself under the enemy's tank with a grenade and destroyed it, thus drinking the elixir of matyrdom."[6] Khomeini's government went on to provide a knapsack to every school child in Iran that showed "Fahmideh's heroic sacrifice under the tank and the grenades he used to blow himself up,"[8] and to include Fahmideh's story alongside that of other martyrs in textbooks intended to improve childhood literacy.[11]
First recipients: 1989
The first Order of Fath medals were conferred on September 27, 1989, after the Iran–Iraq War, with three recipients of the award at First Class level:[4]
^ abcdefg"Leader Confers Medal on IRGC Commanders for Capturing US Marines". Fars News Agency. January 31, 2016. Retrieved January 4, 2020. The first ever medals awarded to the Iranian militaries happened after the Iran-Iraq War on September 27, 1989. The first grade medals went to: Martyr Hossein Fahmideh, 13-year-old volunteer soldier of Basij, Mohsen Rezayee, the former IRGC commander, and Martyr Ali Sayyad Shirazi, the former army chief. In addition, 21 people received 2nd and 29 people received 3rd degree medals.