At the risk of bringing up ancient history, does anyone still recall the intelligence estimate produced by the intelligence community back in July about what would happen if the Iran nuclear deal went through and sanctions were lifted? As the Los Angeles Times reported, the estimate “predicts that Iran’s government will pump most of an expected $100-billion windfall from the lifting of international sanctions into the country’s flagging economy and won’t significantly boost funding for militant groups it supports in the Middle East.”
Well, sanctions have not formally been lifted yet. However, already Iran appears to be ramping up its support for “militant groups” such as the Bashar Assad regime.
If this Reuters dispatch is accurate, “Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.” Providing air cover for the Iranian-Assad forces is the Russian Air Force, which Iran has invited into Syria (and now appears to be inviting into Iraq as well). Presumably, this was the subject of discussions held in Moscow in August between Putin and Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Iranian Quds Force, who traveled to Russia in violation of international sanctions which are technically still on the books. Suffering from decades of sanctions, Iran’s air force is not very capable, but that is sure to change in the near future as sanctions are lifted along with the arms embargo on Iran. In the meantime, the Russian air force is capably playing the role desired by Putin’s old ally Bashar Assad and his new ally, Ayatollah Khameini — they want the Russians to bomb the rebel forces known as the Army of Conquest (am amalgam of the al-Nusra Front and non-jihadist forces) which a few months ago were making major inroads in Idlib Province.
As Guardian correspondent Ian Black, newly returned from Syria, wrote, “Moscow decided to deepen its involvement after the fall of the northern towns of Idlib and nearby Jisr al-Shughour in May served as a ‘wake-up call’ about the parlous state of the Syrian army.” Black further noted another alarming sign of weakness for Assad — “the strength of the regular Syrian army is estimated to be down from a pre-war figure of 300,000 to between 80,000 and 100,000.” Desertions and refusals to serve are rife.
So now the regime is increasingly relying not on the army but on Iran and its proxies: “Another factor in the decline of the regular army,” writes Black, “is the creation of a 125,000-strong locally based National Defence Force, which has been trained and paid by the Iranians, who also favour the use of Shia militia fighters from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as Hezbollah.”
This is a familiar formula, one that Iran has previously followed in Lebanon and is now implementing in Iraq: Create militias directly answerable only to Tehran, and make those militias the main power center in the country, while the regular, non-sectarian army is allowed to wither on the vine. We can expect even more resources to flow to these Iranian-backed fighters as sanctions come off — and that in turn means that the Syrian civil war will continue to grind on, producing more death and destruction, sending more refugees fleeing the country, and further strengthening ISIS which gets to posture as the defender of Sunnis from the Shiite death squads.
