Russian Federation has also committed an expeditionary military force to back the Assad regime’s offensive. In the past week, a senior Hezbollah leader known as Hassan al Haj was killed during the offensive.
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The recent advances of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) and allies in Idlib province just east of the port of Latakia alarmed Iran and Russian Federation and led to the current round of fighting. Moscow claims it is striking IS and other “terrorists”. IRGC Commander Mohammad-Ali Jafari called Hamedani “a pillar of the resistance front against America and the “Zionist regime” (Fars News Agency, October 9, 2015)”.
Now, President Obama’s administration has engineered a multi-national agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear development, the first significant diplomatic accord with Iran under the current regime, although U.S.-Iran relations remain rocky at best. Allahdadi was said to be involved in helping to build up the operational capabilities of Hezbollah’s burgeoning Golan presence.
Members of the guards killed in Syria are referred to as “defenders of the holy shrine” by Iranian media. The takeover of the embassy in Tehran in 1979 followed the overthrow of the Shah and establishment of the Islamic Republic, which had been preceded by a long period of USA entanglement with the Shah and Iran, an arrangement that might have brought short-term benefits for the US, but resulted in long-term liabilities. Because of the brutality he employed in suppressing the riots, in 2011 the European Union put him on its list of senior Iranians against whom sanctions were imposed for human rights violations.
Iran has been Assad’s main external supporter in the Syrian civil war, in which more than 250,000 people have died and millions more have been driven from their homes. In addition, Iran handles proxies (Hezbollah and Shi’ite foreign fighters) that participate in the fighting.
Iran has advised the Syrian army and trained Shia militia units from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The officials said thousands of Iranian troops had arrived to take part in the offensives in support of Assad.
Their deaths come after another top commander, General Hossein Hamadani, was killed on Thursday night on the outskirts of Aleppo. “There is an operational and territorial division of labour, whereby Iran contributes skilled manpower and Russian Federation airpower, probably increasingly in the form of close-air support”.
Although the Russian public is supporting the Syria campaign now, he says, it may not accept the loss of its soldiers in a foreign war.
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However, the Russian defence ministry said an “information-sharing” mechanism has been established through a hotline between the Russian command centre in Syria and a command post of the Israeli air force.
