Tehran has long wielded a strong influence over the war-torn country and exploited it for its foreign policy gains. Related News. Category News. Show people, places and other topics in this story Read articles related to this story See what's popular on TRT World. A picture is worth a thousand words. Follow us on Instagram. TRT World on Youtube Subscribe to our Youtube channel for all latest in-depth, on the ground reporting from around the world.
This site uses cookies. He returned in when his friend told him that all his worries could end if he joined an Iranian militia.
A Sunni, he joined the Sayyidah Zaynab battalions, named after the granddaughter of Prophet Mohammed and daughter of Imam Ali, the patriarch of Shiites. In February, the leader of his militia offered to double his pay if he converted to Shiism himself. Ahmad agreed at once. If I am Shiite I will be paid , Syrian pounds. Taim al-Ahmad from Daraa, a city in southwestern Syria near Jordan, recounted a similar story of a friend who first joined an Iran-backed militia and later converted to Shiism.
Deir Ezzor province is perhaps the key zone of these operations. The sports club in the city has turned into a kitchen and a restaurant for Iranian militias. The whole soccer stadium is now effectively a base for an Iranian takeover, Abu Walid said. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitor, Iran recently invited the people of Mayadeen to the Nour Iranian Cultural Center to attend a course on the principles and doctrines of Shiite religion.
At the end of the course, all who pass would be given money, about , Syrian pounds, and a food basket. Iran has opened a number of religious schools, shrines, and charities in Syria. While it faced less resistance in Damascus and Aleppo, to expand into Deir Ezzor Iran had to entice local tribal leaders, who are often more interested in their own survival and would back whoever is the rising star. Some members of one such tribe, al-Bakara, have responded positively to Iranians mainly because of a tribal leader who sees advantage in currying favor with Iran.
Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat currently in exile in the United States, said that the Iranian presence and activities have sowed the seeds of a future insurgency in his country. But the Alawites are an open society when it comes to religion and social norms. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in , Iran has found different approaches to increase its military and security influence in Syria. The first approach was by directly working with foreign militias and recruiting local militias.
The second approach was created from the core of the first one. Since the beginning of , Iran has turned some of its focus on infiltrating Syrian society and strengthening its relations with Syrian businessmen. During the last several years, the Iranian military involvement in Syria has grown and become more visible, which has made targeting them an easy job for the Israeli air force.
As a result, in , Iran had to find a different approach for its military involvement in order to protect its militias. Iran then began the ambitious plan of redefining its presence in Syria by creating the Local Defense Forces LDF , supporting specific brigades within the Syrian army and, most recently, establishing local private security companies.
The following two maps explain the massive transformation of Iranian influence and control between and Iran encouraged the Shia minority in Syria to form special militias and recruited Sunnis—especially clans—in the provinces of Aleppo, Raqqa, and Deir ez-Zor.
In addition, some of the Shia militias in Syria were and continue to be recruited on a sectarian basis under the pretext of defending places considered holy by the Shia community. For example, campaigns are being conducted in the areas housing holy Shia shrines in Damascus in the Sayeda Zeinab district. Both wield substantial influence and maintain a significant security presence inside Syria, in support so far of their common ally Assad — but with long-term interests that could potentially diverge.
In fact, Russia has been sharing some intelligence with Hezbollah for quite a while, at least since , even before the Syrian civil war. Second, Putin knows that he is now viewed as an important player even by Arab governments that dislike his policies — including Saudi Arabia, to cite one key example. Third, some major Arab governments, especially Iraq, but I suspect Egypt as well, actually prefer Assad to Daesh or the Muslim Brotherhood, so they do not oppose Russian policy in Syria.
Nevertheless, as U. Worse yet, it is also an insufficiently clear one, judging from the declarations of some of the key players. As for the immediate question of possible Russian pressure on Assad to remove, or at least restrain, these Iranian-led units, there exist good reasons to doubt whether such pressure would succeed — even in the unprecedented event that Moscow decided to exert it. And because he no longer needs Putin to defend the airspace over Damascus, he will be less likely to bow to Russian pressure….
What Assad does still need in Damascus is continued strong defensive military support form Iran, its proxy Hezbollah, and Iraq Shiite militias.
As it stands … neither Assad nor Iran will accept a political transition in Syria, even if Russia agrees to one. The final section below suggests one credible option for. The United States should urge the eventual withdrawal of the latter actors, perhaps keeping open an option for international peacekeepers by common consent.
Even if such a declaration has no immediate practical effect, it would help reassure American friends inside Syria and beyond, and possibly set the stage for future steps to separate Russian and regime interests from those of Iran and its dangerous proxies. Why would Russia accept any of this? For one thing, Trump is prepared to offer the sweetener of selective sanctions relief. First, this deal would defer action against the Assad regime — which is too weak to retake control of the whole country without outside military support anyway.
Second, Russia really does want to rid Syria of terrorists, which it sees as a threat to its own security. Notably, some Arab players on opposite sides of the war are newly aware of this last important point. Different U.
This will almost certainly have to suffice until a more propitious political or military horizon emerges — either from the ruins of the Syrian state, or from a drastic change of direction in the Iranian one. Home About Team Books. Home featured. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. Related Posts. Appraising the Uncertainty of Post-Withdrawal U. Latest from Twitter. Home About News Contact Privacy policy. Login to your account below. Forgotten Password?
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