The commander of Iran’s Basij volunteer paramilitary force said Wednesday that the Syrian militia loyal to President Bashar Assad is very similar to the
Islamic Republic’s Basij force.
Muhammad Reza Naghdi said the Syrian
force, known as the Shabiha, is a popular armed movement that behaves in a
similar way to its Iranian counterpart, the Basij, according to the
Persian-language service of the Iranian Students’ News Agency.
Naghdi
said that the similarity between what he described as “popular forces” was the
source of accusations that Iranian forces are present in Syria.
“The
behavior of the Syrian popular forces [in the civil war] is very similar to that
of the Iranian Basij, therefore it is assumed that Iranian forces are present,”
Naghdi said.
Iran’s Basij operates under the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps, has several branches including three armed wings and has grown in power
since the unrest following the disputed 2009 election.
In the same
interview, Naghdi denied that members of the IRGC’s elite extraterritorial unit,
the Qods Force, were in Syria to assist Assad in his fight against rebel
forces.
“If we are talking about the transfer and sharing of experience
[between Iran and Syria] then it is only natural that such a thing should exist,
but we are focusing on the fact that there are no Iranian [military] forces
present in Syria,” Naghdi added.
Iran, which has repeatedly expressed its
support for Assad, admitted earlier this year that its forces are present in
Damascus, but later denied a physical military presence and claimed Tehran is
only advising Assad.
On May 27, ISNA published an interview with Qods
Force deputy commander Esmail Ghani, who said Iran had been militarily involved
in Syria to help prevent civilian deaths. Several hours after publishing the
interview with Ghani, the news site removed it, although opposition sites
managed to save screen grabs of the interview.
In September, IRGC
commander in chief Maj.-Gen. Muhammad Ali Jafari acknowledged in a Tehran news
conference that members of the Qods Force were in Syria, but in a non-military
capacity.
The Qods Force had provided the Assad regime with “intellectual
and advisory assistance and transferred experience,” Jafari said, according to a
report by the Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC. Like Naghdi,
Jafari compared the Shabiha with the Basij.
Syrian opposition activists
have accused the Shabiha of helping Assad’s forces and of committing atrocities
against civilians.
Naghdi’s comments also come after the US accused Iran
in May of “aiding and abetting” the massacre of Syrian women and children in
Houla. In a May 29 press briefing, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria
Nuland said that the Shabiha closely resembled the Basij model.
“The
Iranians have clearly provided support and training and advice to the Syrian
army, but this Shabiha thug force mirrors the same force that the Iranians used.
The Basij and the Shabiha are the same type of thing, and clearly reflects the
tactics and the techniques that the Iranians used for their own suppression of
civil rights,” Nuland said.