Suicide Bomber Caption

In the Dom Post today an LA Times piece on the rise of Iran to regional dominance is illustrated with a big photo of a girl in hejab writing on a piece of paper. The caption reads:
“Signing their life away: Iranians register at Khageh-Nasir [sic] University in Tehran this month as suicide bombers to assist in the Palestinian uprising.”
The photo is sourced from REUTERS and bears no relationship to the Iranian article. The caption caught my interest, for fairly obvious reasons – it seemed like bullshit. So I did some digging online.
The story behind the photo seems to come from Associated Press:
Suicide Bombers Warn US, UK Of Attacks. A slightly different version, with extra information, appears in The Age.

• There is an Iranian group named Esteshadion, or Martyrdom Seekers, formed in late 2004, who held a seminar on suicide-bombing tactics at Khajeh-Nasir University.
• Their spokesman claimed that there were over a 1,000 members of the group, and that they would mobilise to attack American and British ‘sensitive points’ (in Iraq) if Iran’s nuclear facilities were attacked.
• Attacks on civilians – an abominable behaviour deeply associated with suicide bombing – are explicitly not condoned
• After the seminar about 50 of the 200-strong audience registered with the group.

Back in July, a report on the organisation aired on Al-Arabiya TV, transcribed here (of course no information on the reliability of the translation. It was rapidly picked up by all the extreme right-wing blog sites.) This report suggests that the movement is motivated more generally by concern over Islamic holy sites in Palestine and Iraq.
A movement leader in this report stresses that the movement is not symbolic, but the AP report suggests this view is not shared by all members – in that piece, a 23-year old signee is quoted “We are trying to defend Islam. It’s a way to draw the attention of others to our activities.” (At least, to me this suggests it’s a symbolic act; draw your own conclusions. It is, of course hard to tell for sure given the translation across language and the inevitable bastardisation of journalistic quotation.)
What to make of all this? I’m going to avoid getting into an essay about this. I will say that this indicates the caption the Dom Post used was inaccurate and irresponsible, and I just emailed them to that effect.