Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported today that an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander boasted that Syrian missile factories, which help prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, are built by Iran.
Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said Syria’s missile-production plants have been built by Iran.
“The missile production plants in Syria have been built by Iran and the missiles designed by Iran are being produced there,” Hajizadeh said in an interview on Tuesday.
He also said that even the resistance front in Palestine and Lebanon has received missile-production trainings from Iran.
The admission comes just a month after The Australian reported that Iran was planning to ship drones and missiles to Syria.
The US congress has approved $US500 million ($574m) in aid, weapons and training for Syrian rebel groups. Saudi Arabia and Jordan are to open their military bases to train 10,000 troops, who will be filtered back into the conflict to strengthen the Free Syrian Army.
Worried about the impact this will have on its client state, Iran will airlift missiles and mortar bombs to its proxy militias fighting the FSA and Islamic State on separate fronts, as well as drones to monitor enemy movement.
The agreement to bolster Syria’s armaments was finalized by Assad and IRGC commander Qassem Suleimani. The IRGC is reported to have some 2,000 troops deployed in Syria.
Iran’s military support of Syria is another reason that Iran, not the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is the key threat to American interests in the Middle East.
In Is ISIS Distracting Us from a More Serious Iranian Threat?, which was published in the November 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, David Daoud warns:
Direct cooperation [between the U.S. and Iran] would be even worse. It would allow Iran to expand and entrench its hold on Iraq and Syria under the umbrella of U.S. firepower. The United States’ assessment of Iran as a regional stabilizer must be revised in order to prevent that. Iran’s goal is to obtain regional hegemony—expanding its control over territory across the “Shi’a Crescent” and obtaining nuclear weapons are incremental moves in that direction. They must be actively combated, not facilitated, by the United States. At the moment, however, the U.S. seems to be turning a blind eye to Tehran, allowing it to do as it pleases.
[Photo: M-ATF / WikiCommons ]