For decades, Iran has been a close ally of the Syrian regime, but since the uprising against the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad began three years ago Iranian influence in Syria has increased exponentially. According to Syrian opposition sources, Al-Assad is now only a figurehead, having abdicated power to Iranian military commanders. The elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) is not just shoring up the Damascus regime, but also setting military strategy and determining political priorities. Iran is so involved in the Syrian scene that top Iranian officials are now admitting that Syria is a “frontline” for their country. But as the Iranians tighten their grip on Damascus and its decision-makers, the on-going civil war continues to take a terrible toll on the civilian population. Iran has facilitated an influx of foreign fighters into the country, mostly Shiites from inside and outside the region, further fomenting the sectarian aspect of the current conflict. Syrian opposition sources say that Iran is ramping up the sectarian discourse to distort the revolution, the originally aims of which were freedom and justice. Now it is no longer about liberal ideas, but instead is about the protection of a fanatical brand of Shiism that Iran is using to camouflage its ambitions to dominate the region. The Syrian opposition claims that the Syrian regime is allowing IRG officers who ostensibly came to Syria only as advisers to run the country. In particular, they say that Qassem Soleimani, commander of the elite Iranian Qods Force, is the de facto leader of Syria. Syria has repeatedly tried to conceal the role played by Soleimani, but dissidents say that he is now in charge of the country's security and military arrangements. Some opposition members even say, mockingly, that Soleimani, not Al-Assad, should have run for president in the recent elections. According to the Syrian opposition, Soleimani is organising and personally selecting members of the presidential guard. Sources say that he doesn't allow the involvement of anyone other than himself in security arrangements for Al-Assad and his family. He is also close to the top echelons of the Iranian leadership. Having led the Qods Force for 15 years, he is known to have strong ties with Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Syrian dissidents say that Soleimani's goal is to redraw the map of the Middle East in order to maximise Iran's role in regional politics. Soleimani is rumoured to be a ruthless tactician who uses an extensive network of military and intelligence operatives to hunt down and kill his adversaries. For over ten years, such operatives have carried out assassinations and bombings in the region and beyond. American sources say that Soleimani has targeted his foes as far afield as New Delhi, Lagos, and Nairobi. THE SECTARIAN THEME: Over the past few years, Tehran has been the main supporter of the Syrian regime. It has sent in advisers and troops, hired militias and redrawn military strategy, supplied hardware and money to buy weapons, and watched like a hawk over Al-Assad, making sure he stays in office as the pawn in his Iranian minders. Iran is said to have trained thousands of Syrian troops and paramilitary recruits, but there is always a sectarian overtone to its efforts. The Iranians recruit pro-regime militia from Syria's Shiite community, telling them it is a part of their duty to defend Shiite sacred sites. But Iran's biggest contribution to the war has perhaps been in enlisting Lebanon's Hezbollah in the defence of the regime. Following orders from Iran, Hezbollah has dispatched thousands of battle-hardened fighters to confront and punish the regime's opponents. Both Hezbollah and Iran have said that without this move the Damascus regime would have fallen. Iranian recruitment efforts have also not been confined to Syria. According to the Syrian opposition, Tehran has managed to bring Shiite fighters from Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan into the country. In recent months, the inhabitants of Damascus have watched as bearded men in full military gear roamed the streets of their city. Fighters from the IRG, Hezbollah, and Iraq's Abul Fadl Al-Abbas militia patrol neighbourhoods, sometimes chanting Shiite religious songs that more often than not include insults to Sunni traditions. Scenes of this nature have been filmed and uploaded onto the Internet by Iranian supporters seeking to drum up support for the Shiite cause. As a result, the Syrian regime is now beholden to Iran and dependent on it for its very survival. Once teetering on the verge of defeat, the regime has regained territory and consolidated its grip on its strongholds in central and western Syria. It has Hezbollah and the Iranians, as well as the brutality of the regime's own security forces, to thank for this. The Syrian people have paid a heavy price: half of the civilian population have either lost their homes through the war, or sought refuge elsewhere, even outside the country. But the regime's obsession with survival, boosted by Iran's determination to win the war at the expense of everything that is dear to ordinary Syrians, eclipses all other considerations. Now Iranian leaders speak of Syria as the 35th Iranian province, depicting Damascus as a frontline in their empire that runs — through the good offices of Hezbollah — to the shores of the Mediterranean. The result is that Syria is now a pillar of Iranian Shiism; the Damascus regime, like that of Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Al-Maliki, is subservient to Tehran's wishes. Today, the Iranian sphere of influence runs, in the words of Jordan's King Abdullah, like an arch running across the Levant, passing from Baghdad to Damascus and onwards towards Beirut. One remarkable comment about Syria's current status came from a top Iranian cleric who runs a research centre specialising in confronting the “soft war” that the west is said to be waging on Iran. Mehdi Taeb, the brother of IRG chief Hussein Taeb, has said that his country needs Syria more than it needs its own oil-rich province of Khuzestan. Speaking to members of the volunteer-based paramilitary group Basij, which is run by the IRG, Mehdi Taeb said: “Syria is the 35th province of Iran and a province of strategic importance. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate either Syria or Khuzestan, the priority is that we keep Syria. If we keep Syria, we can get Khuzestan back, but if we lose Syria, we cannot keep Tehran.” In his statement, made in February 2013, Taeb also expounded on the military aspect of his country's assistance to the Syrian regime. “Syria has an army, but it does not have the ability to manage a war inside the country's cities,” he said. “It is for this reason that the Iranian government has suggested that in order to manage an urban war there is a need for a militia like the Basij.” The Syrian Basij was formed to “take over the war in the streets from the army,” he said, claiming that nearly 60,000 recruits had been hired by the pro-regime paramilitary group. Naturally, the Syrian opposition has been shocked to hear that their country, in the eyes of the regime's Iranian supporters, is just a battlefield for defending Tehran's interests. Former IRG commander Hossein Hamadani has said that his country is willing to send 130,000 more troops from its own paramilitary forces to fight in Syria. According to Hamadani, Iran is fighting in Syria to defend its own revolution, stressing that the current war is as crucial to Iran as the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s once was. Moreover, another Iranian commander, Mohammad Iskandari, has said that the war in Syria is in fact part of Iran's war against the US. Iskandari says that the IRG has 42 brigades and 138 battalions on standby, ready to fight in defence of the Al-Assad regime. Majeed Mazahiri, another IRG commander, has described Syria and Lebanon as Iranian “frontlines.” Iran is obliged to support its allies in both countries, he has said, since “otherwise the enemy will reach our borders.” SYRIAN BACKLASH: Such views of the Syrian conflict have been greeted with a mixture of disbelief and resentment by the Syrian opposition. To have their country slip into mass killings and destruction in order to consolidate Iran's security and promote its regional aims is not what the Syrians intended when they rose up to bring down the authoritarian Al-Assad regime. “After three years of war by Tehran and its lackeys against the Syrian people we are now hearing the Iranian leaders admit that the Damascus regime has succeeded in staying in power because of them,” Syrian opposition member Michel Kilo said. “For the Iranians it is acceptable for Syrians to die for the sake Tehran. The Iranians say that Al-Assad would have fallen two years ago if it hadn't been for their support. They brag that they have turned Syria into a frontline for their own defence. “The Iranians believe that the destruction of Syria and the murder of its inhabitants is just a prerequisite for their regime's security. The Al-Assad regime has become a pawn for Iran, its first line of defence. The fighting in Syria is no longer about defending the Syrian regime, but about the Iranian regime,” Kilo added. According to Borhan Ghalyun, former president of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), “the wavering of the west” has been responsible for Iran's current policies in Syria. “The containment policy which the US has pursued with regard to the Syrian crisis is what has encouraged Iran to rule out any possibility of moving from the battlefield to the negotiating table,” he said. “Iran cannot win the war in Syria. But if the fighting keeps going, it will destroy the country and send the region as a whole to the verge of war.” The Syrian opposition says that Iran's ultimate dream is to revive the former Persian Empire and extend it to the shores of the Mediterranean. Its sectarian policies, ideological posturing, and brutal military tactics are means towards that end, they say. According to Syrian opposition member Bashar Al-Eissa, Iran is an integral part of the on-going crisis and the only way to rid the country of the Iranian influence is to bring down the regime. “The Iranian mindset is bonded to the Al-Assad regime not with doctrinal ties, but with deep-seated interests. The deeper the alliance between the Iranian and Syrian regimes, the more polarised the region becomes between Sunnis and Shiites,” he said. The Iranian resolve to control Syria has increased with time, especially with the growing role that the IRG plays in Iranian politics, according to Al-Eissa. ALAWITE RECRUITS: In the current polarisation, Al-Assad has also gambled on the future of his own clan, the breakaway Shiite faction known as the Alawites, threatening the survival of the community. Nasser Al-Naqri, an Alawite opposition member, said that the alliance between the Tehran and Damascus regimes was more political than religious, however. “What we see is not an alliance between the Shiites and the Alawites, but an alliance between Iran and the Syrian regime,” he said, adding that the regime of Bashar Al-Assad has given Iran more privileges than his late father, former Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad, ever had. In the past, the Syrian regime used to forbid Iran from proselytising among the Alawite community, for example. “Hafez Al-Assad allowed Iran to proselytise in various areas, but not in the coastal areas where the majority of the Alawites live. But now Syria has become an Iranian stronghold. There are Iranian cultural centres everywhere, Iranian television programmes are prevalent, and Iran is even pumping money into countryside,” Al-Naqri said. “Iran has seized the mausoleums of the Prophet's companions in Syria and turned them into Shiite holy sites, and Al-Assad has permitted the Iranians to proselytise among the Alawites,” he added. The Iranians are also building five new Shiite religious centres, or hosayniyat, in Syria, a sign of how vulnerable the regime is becoming to Tehran's wishes. “If Al-Assad was confident that the Alawites would remain loyal to him, he wouldn't have done that,” Al-Naqri said. The major difference between the Alawites and the Shiites is that the Shiites believe that religious leaders should have authority over society, whereas the Alawites do not admit clerical authority. As Al-Naqri explained, “In the Alawite faith there is no higher authority. But Hafez Al-Assad has destroyed the true Alawite spiritual leaders, replacing them with puppets of the regime.” According to the opposition, Tehran is trying to run Syria as a military base, sending massive financial and military aid to the regime and its paramilitary groups, which have been killing and intimidating its adversaries. The Syrian armed opposition has reacted to this by killing Hezbollah commanders and kidnapping IRG officials, later trading them for prisoners held by the pro-regime forces. “Iran has occupied Syria, and Soleimani is now running the country with Al-Assad just a puppet housed in the presidential palace,” said Riyad Hejab, the former Syrian prime minister who has now joined the opposition. The aim of the Syrian revolution must be not only to overthrow the regime but also to “liberate Syria from the Iranian occupation,” he added. Nevertheless, in Damascus, still a stronghold of the regime, the Iranian presence is more pronounced than ever. The Alawite paramilitary contingent that used to man checkpoints inside the capital and the roads leading to it has been sent to the battlefront, a move said to have been taken because of troop shortages. Iranian and Hezbollah units are now in charge of Damascus's security, placing the Syrian capital in the hands of men whose allegiance is to Tehran rather than Damascus. This is a situation that reminds some of foreign troops poised to impose a state of siege on a defeated nation. Though Soleimani is said to have now left Syria to coordinate Iranian efforts in Iraq, his work in Syria is far from over.
