Syria in civil war
Syrian and Iranian experts were guests of an online conference on Monday organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI ) to discuss the scale of the Iranian regime’s defeats in Syria, particularly its military casualties.
Ahmad Ramadan, chairman of the Media and Public Relations Bureau of the opposition Syrian National Council, Saleh Hamid, an Arab political and human rights activist, and Sanabarqh Zahedi, Chairman of the Judicial Committee of the NCRI, participated in this conference.
Dr. Zahedi touched upon the Iranian regime’s active involvement in the massacre of the innocent Syrian people. He referred to two stages of the defeats and high number of casualties of the regime and its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in Syria and said:
Last June, the regime’s official news agency IRNA announced that 400 Revolutionary Guards had lost their lives in Syria until that time. One should mention that this number only encompasses the Revolutionary Guards and the Bassij forces dispatched to Syria from Iran and does not include the mercenaries from other countries who lost their lives in Syria. This casualty figure relates to the first half of the last year when Syria’s armed opposition forces had significant advances in the north in Aleppo region, in Jisr al-Shughour and in Sahl al-ghab, as well as in Daraa, capturing strategic areas. The outcome of these advances was the defeat of the Iranian regime and Bashar al-Assad that promised the toppling of the regime in not too distant a future. Secret intelligence from inside the Iranian regime indicate that during that period the various regime forces, including the Revolutionary Guards, the Hezbollah and the Afghan forces, had lost their morale due to the blows they suffered at the hands of the opposition in Syria and were running away from the fight in different fronts. The regime’s assessment at the time was that it could save Assad only if it would inject 30,000 Revolutionary Guards into Syria.
It was after this stage and these defeats that [IRGC Quds Force commander] Qassem Soleimani went to Moscow and asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for help. Subsequently, Putin met with [the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei. According to these discussions, the two parties agreed that Russia would heavily bomb the opposition forces in Syria and in return Khamenei and Soleimani committed to bring in the necessary ground forces to push back the opposition from the areas they had captured. Khamenei told Putin that he would continue the fight in Syria until the last Revolutionary Guard. We are now three months past this stage and we are witnessing consecutive defeats of the regime, including the loss of Hossein Hamedani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria, the injury to Qasem Soleimani, right hand to Khamenei and Commander of the Quds Force, along with around 20 other IRGC generals and hundreds of regime’s forces.
Therefore, in the new equation in Syria — Russia, the Iranian regime, and Bashar Assad on one side and the armed opposition and the Syrian people on the other side — the Iranian regime and its allies were unable to affect a strategic change on the ground. This is the second stage of a great defeat for the regime in Syria which was accompanied by extensive casualties to its forces.
Ahmed Ramadan stated: The defeats and casualties that the Iranian regime has suffered in Syria are of strategic nature.
Mr. Ramadhan added that since the Iranian regime has come to power, it has spent billions upon billions to set up terrorist networks, forces and cells in various countries and in particular in Arab countries. If we take a look at this investment of 35 to 36 years and that the regime is losing it, we get a better understanding of these defeats. We can view the regime’s nuclear project from the same standpoint.
This regime has now been defeated in the nuclear realm. It is out of breath in Yemen. It does not have the upper hand in Iraq. We have to add on to this its situation in Syria, a country that the regime has had its best relations with since it came to power and they in fact succeeded in imposing their dominance on Syria. In fact, an Arab official told me that the control the IRGC have over Damascus Airport surpasses that on Tehran Airport. Thus, the IRGC imposed their control over all vital and critical sites of the country. This was the situation before 2011 and the initiation of the Syrian revolution. The security organs, military organs, public services, information agencies… were all under the control of the Iranian regime. For example, al-Alam TV station that was connected to the Presidential Palace was permitted to broadcast anything it wished, a privilege Syrian televisions did not have.
Mr. Ramadhan added that there is need for unity between the democratic opposition in Syria and the democratic opposition of Iran. He stated: It may be useful if we hold a conference where the Arab and Iranian opposition forces and popular forces on both sides would come together and give this message to the world that the mullahs do not represent the Iranian people and that they are even isolated inside their own country. Meanwhile, as Arabs, we declare that we are not against the Iranian people, but against a regime that is destroying and harming the Iranian people, the Arab people, and the entire region.
Mr. Saleh Hamid, political and human rights activist and an official of Al-Arabiya TV, referred to the schism inside the Iranian regime concerning the issue of Syria. He said:
In addition to the role of the Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries and militias that fight under the command of the IRGC in Syria against the people of that country, we need to also touch upon the serious differences between Russia and Iran that have surfaced regarding the role that each plays in the fight. Some Iranian regime foreign ministry officials say that we have to sacrifice much, and Russia wants to cultivate on our sacrifice. How is it that despite the tremendous price that the regime is paying for Syria it is Russia that would decide the fate and the outcome of the Syrian dossier and future developments?
Mr. Hamid also spoke of recent major developments in the Gulf countries regarding Iran and the role that the Iranian opposition as well as the role that ethnic and religious minorities are playing. One aspect of this role plays against the Iranian regime’s meddling in Syria.
Talking about Qassem Soleimani, he said that as the Syrian and Iranian opposition have announced, this man was injured in Syria by a TOW missile and three other officers who were with him were killed. But the regime tries to hide this fact. The Iranian regime declared that he would show up in a conference but he was unable to come. The ambiguity surrounding the fate of Qassem Soleimani, the regime’s senior commander in Syria, exacerbates the rift within the regime and its casualties. Likewise, many Revolutionary Guards commanders and generals have been killed in Syria.
At the end of his remarks Mr. Saleh Hamid called on the Syrian opposition and the Arab countries to side with the Iranian people and opposition.