Tehran: At a base near Tehran, Iranian forces are training militiamen from across the Arab world to do battle in Syria-showing the widening role of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria’s bloody war.
The busloads of Shiite militiamen from Iraq, Syria and other Arab states have been arriving at the Iranian base in recent weeks, under cover of darkness, for instruction in urban warfare and the teachings of Iran’s clerics, according to Iranian military figures and residents in the area. The fighters’ mission: Fortify the Syrian regime of President Bashar Al Assad against Sunni rebels, the US and Israel.
Iran’s widening role in Syria has helped Al Assad climb back from near-defeat in less than a year. The role of Iran’s training camp for Shiite fighters hasn’t previously been disclosed.
The fighters “are told that the war in Syria is akin to [an] epic battle for Shiite Islam, and if they die they will be martyrs of the highest rank,” says an Iranian military officer briefed on the training camp, which is 15 miles outside Tehran and called Amir Al Momenin, or Commander of the Faithful.
The training of thousands of fighters is an outgrowth of Iran’s decision last year to immerse itself in the Syrian civil war on behalf of its struggling ally, the Al Assad regime, in an effort to shift the balance of power in the Middle East. Syria’s bloodshed is shaping into more than a civil war: It is now a proxy war among regional powers jockeying for influence in the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions.
On one side of this proxy war is Al Assad, backed by Iran, Russia and Shiite militias. On the other side, the rebels, backed by Saudi Arabia, Arab states and the US.
This account of the expanded involvement in Syria of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards is based on interviews with individuals with direct knowledge of the Guards’ activities, including Syrian and Arab Shiite fighters, members of the Guards, high-ranking military personnel in Iran and an adviser to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant force and political party in Lebanon. The Guards, a military unit tasked with safeguarding Iran against external or internal threats, is also a powerful political and economic organisation.
Last Friday, Dutch television broadcast a video described as having been made by a Guards filmmaker in Syria that shows Guards members living in a school in the city of Aleppo and meeting with the local Syrian army commander. In the video, the Guards commander in Aleppo says he has been commanding Syrian Army units for a year and a half and that Iran is training fighters from around the Arab world to fight in Syria.
A senior official at Iran’s mission to the United Nations says, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has no military involvement in Syria.” The official, Ali Reza Miryousefi, says the main obstacle to peace in Syria is “the foreign financial and military support that Syrian rebels receive from some Arab and Western countries.”
Just over a year ago, US officials publicly described Al Assad’s fall as imminent. That would have been a major blow for Iran: Syria is Iran’s most important Arab ally and serves as a land bridge for Iranian arms and cash to Lebanese and Palestinian militias fighting Israel. Last summer, after Syrian rebels captured large sections of the important northern city of Aleppo, the senior command of the Revolutionary Guards sprang into action, according to US officials and Guards members in Iran. Under its overseas commander, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the military unit established “operation rooms” to control cooperation between Tehran, Syrian forces and fighters from Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful military force and a creation of the Guards in the 1980s, according to US and Arab officials and Guards members.
Two senior commanders who oversaw Tehran’s 2009 crackdown on Iranian pro-democracy protesters-Generals Hussain Hamadani and Yadollah Javani-were deployed to Syria, according to US officials and Guards members. Gen Sulaimani also sent top Guards personnel who had run counterinsurgency campaigns against Iran’s own rebel movements, these people say.
Some Revolutionary Guards military advisers and counterinsurgency experts have gone into battle alongside Al Assad’s forces and militias to secure key victories, say these officials. Iranian websites tied to the Guards have memorialised the names of Guards members described as Iranian “martyrs” killed in the Syrian civil war. The sites publish pictures of the funerals and report that Guards commanders sometimes give speeches.
The Guards and Gen. Soleimani also are mobilizing thousands of fighters from Arab countries, primarily Lebanon and Iraq, to fortify Al Assad’s security forces, training them at camps like Amir Al Momenin, say these officials.
The Amir Al Momenin camp, home to the Guards’ ballistic missile arsenal, is an important military installation. Shiite fighters are trained there in guerrilla warfare, field survival and the handling of heavy guns, according to Guards members and others who work in the camp. There are also daily religious classes.
The military wing of Lebanese Hezbollah has alone sent thousands of fighters into Syria in coordination with the Guards. Hezbollah commanders currently control important strategic areas reclaimed by the Damascus regime, including the city of Qusayr, some sections of the city of Homs and enclaves in the southern province of Deraa.
“Qasem Soleimani is now running Syria,” says Col Ahmad Hamada, an officer with the rebel Free Syrian Army, based in its command near the northern city of Aleppo. “Bashar is just his mayor.”
US officials say they don’t have any specific information on the Amir Al Momenin camp. But defense officials say it appears consistent with how the Guards trained Iraqi militants to fight US and allied forces in Iraq. The Pentagon captured and interrogated hundreds of Shiite fighters during the Iraq war who described traveling to Iran for training.
Iranian and Syrian officials publicly acknowledge their cooperation in the war. Syria’s foreign minister last month said the two countries are working out of the same “trench.” But Al Assad and other senior Syrian officials say the Guards aren’t running Syria’s overall campaign. They call the allegations propaganda to justify US military action.
“This is really funny,” says Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Al Meqdad, regarding claims that Iran is helping to run the war. He calls them “rumours” intended to “deceive the public.”
Iran also supports Syria’s regime financially and politically. In July Iran offered Syria a $3.6 billion credit line to buy oil and food and in January another $1 billion credit line to import goods from Iran. Iranian officials have also defended Al Assad: After claims that his forces used chemical weapons, Iran blamed rebels for the attack.
The presence of Iran and its proxies inside Syria is emerging as a strategic challenge for President Barack Obama as he maintains the threat of military strikes against the Al Assad regime in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons last month. The White House says any US military operations against Syria would be limited and focused solely on degrading Damascus’s chemical-weapons capabilities.
Iranian and Lebanese individuals with knowledge of the Guards say the organisation is debating whether it would retaliate against US and Israeli targets stationed in the Mediterranean and the Gulf, either directly or through proxies, such as Hezbollah and Iraqi militias.
Tehran, Damascus and Hezbollah describe the Syria conflict as a potential turning point in what they consider their struggle with the US and its Mideast allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia. They also see their fight as a defense of Shiites against Sunni extremists.
“Syria is the front line of resistance,” Gen Sulaimani recently told an elite Iranian government body, according to state media. “We will support Syria to the end.”
Tehran’s alliance with Syria began shortly after Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. Damascus under Al Assad’s father, Hafez Al Assad, was the first Arab country to back Iran’s revolutionary government. Tehran’s ayatollahs, in turn, recognised the Al Assad family’s Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, as a legitimate branch of their religion.
The Guards’ influence in Damascus grew significantly after Al Assad took power in 2000, according to current and former Syrian military officers. Operations between the Guards and Syria’s security forces started to grow more integrated, with Iranian advisers basing themselves in Syria. Iran’s government opened weapons factories and religious centers in Syria as well.
“Bashar relied on Iran in a way his father never did,” says Col Hamada, the FSA commander, who defected from the Syrian military last year.
During the first year of Syria’s war, Tehran’s involvement was relatively limited, according to US, Arab and Iranian military officials. Iranian experts in electronic surveillance and crowd control, schooled during Tehran’s 2009 crackdown on democracy protesters, were dispatched to Damascus. However, no Revolutionary Guards or Hezbollah fighters were yet engaged in significant fighting.
This began shifting in mid-2012 as Iran tracked rebel fighters moving toward Aleppo, these officials say. Opposition forces also assassinated Al Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, a powerful figure in Syria’s security forces. Gen Sulaimani, fearing the Damascus regime’s collapse, dispatched Guards commanders skilled in urban warfare to help coordinate Al Assad’s war effort.
— Zawya Dow Jones
