“Last month, they launched air operations really fast, and the logistical support was just not there at the time”, explained Michael Kofman, a leading Russian expert at the Wilson Center. While there is no love lost between Tehran and the Syrian president (or between Moscow and Assad for that matter), Assad is still the only game in town for Iran.
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Iran, of course, is doing precisely the opposite-organizing thousands of Iraqi Shia militia groups to fight on Assad’s behalf, deploying additional Quds Force operatives to advise pro-Assad military units on the ground, and funneling plane-loads of ammunition and weapon to government forces.
Insurgents captured a town on a major highway in western Syria on Thursday, November 5, rebels and a monitoring group said, according to Reuters.
“This [efficiency of countering terrorism] can be proved by the the losses suffered by the terrorist organizations, such as the Islamic State, this month, following the start of the Russian campaign”.
The Russian campaign has also been hitting the Islamic State group, which controls a large stretch from the outskirts of the northern city of Aleppo east across the country to Iraq.
More than 250,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war, which began in 2011 and has frequently spilled across the border.
It was a rare heavy Russian bombardment targeting ISIL rather than other insurgent groups.
“ISIS is using this to say to the people, especially the poor or the not well-educated people, ‘we are fighting Russian Federation, the U.S., the crusaders.’ They are using this to recruit new guys to work and fight for them”, Raqqawi says.
In a Thursday phone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov underlined the Islamic Republic’s fundamental role in the diplomatic efforts to end over four years of violence in Syria, calling for Iran’s presence in the upcoming Vienna summit, IRNA reported.
Activists say Syrian rebels have recaptured a village in the country’s west, days after it was seized by government troops as part of a major offensive. The alleged bombing of the Russian airliner over the Sinai would make the provision of surface to air missiles to any group in Syria even more unlikely.
In late October, it showed he had uploaded pictures from Aleppo, one of which showed him holding an assault rifle while wearing civilian clothes. The U.S. coalition has been supporting FSA military operations with air strikes although, it must be said, to no great effect as yet. Iran regards Syria as its client state – an essential building block in the Shi’ite axis it has assembled across the Middle East – and it has supported Assad with money, arms and fighting forces, both its own Revolutionary Guards and scores of thousands of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. Backed by the strikes, Syrian troops have been trying to reach Kweiras and break the siege.
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“The regime is collapsing and only the Russians are propping them up”, said Ahmed Saoud, a commander in the 13th Division, another American-based FSA faction that has gotten new infusions of TOWS and ammunition.
