“Actually”, says Evgeny Buzhinsky, a retired lieutenant general, “we don’t need a huge contingent of air force in Syria because the Russian air force plays the role of aviation support for the ground forces”.
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“The intensity of the sorties… has slightly decreased in the past day”, a statement said, because “the front line with the terrorist groups of ISIL (Islamic State group) is changing as a result of active offensives by the Syrian armed forces”.
It said Syrian soldiers and fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah were involved in the assault. The Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai reported that Tehran would send 2,000 troops to Syria, along with 5,000 Iraqi and Afghan Shia fighters.
“Iranian Republican [Revolutionary] Guards officer Hossein Hamedani, who was killed in the Aleppo countryside on 9 October, had announced weeks earlier that his country sought to “establish 14 cultural institutions for popular mobilization in 14 Syrian governorates”.
“There is no doubt an Iranian escalation [is being] coordinated with the Russian intervention”, said Emile Hokayem of the global Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
The Indonesian diplomat who is officially in Tehran for the first time, deemed today’s meeting with FM Zarif highly positive, expressing her country’s keenness to expand cooperation with Iran in various fields of trade, research, energy, and sports.
On Tuesday, two Iranian generals were killed during fighting between pro-Assad forces and Syrian rebels in the city of Homs.
Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Brookings Doha Center, said much will depend on how quickly and efficiently the rebels’ weaponry can be replenished by the states supporting them. It emerged on Wednesday that two other senior members were killed this week: they were named as Farshad Hasonizadeh and Hamid Mokhtarband.
Warren said initial reports are always updated but that the jets certainly were close to each other.
The military said Russian airstrikes on militant positions have hit a command center in Aleppo province, a land mine depot in Idlib, artillery positions in Hama and Soviet-made air defense systems in eastern Ghouta near Damascus.
He said their presence in Syria is not new but had been kept quiet.
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If the Kremlin can reach agreement with Saudi Arabia, which has pushed strongly for Assad’s ouster since the start of the Syrian conflict in March 2011 – and has been the principal supporter of various opposition groups – it could help jumpstart the stalled peace talks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sharply criticized Russian Federation for targeting moderate rebels and warned Moscow that Ankara could turn to other gas suppliers if it doesn’t revise its policy in Syria.
