Iran's plans to take over Syria

Others refuse to go and fight in Syria, and there have already been desertions from Hezbollah’s ranks.

By SHIMON SHAPIRA
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah 390 (R) (photo credit: REUTERS/ Ahmad Shalha)
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah 390 (R)
(photo credit: REUTERS/ Ahmad Shalha)
• In mid-April, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah paid a secret visit to Tehran where he met with the top Iranian officials, headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Suleimani prepared an operational plan named after him based upon the establishment of a 150,000-man force for Syria, the majority of whom will come from Iran, Iraq, and a smaller number from Hezbollah and the Gulf states.
• Suleimani’s involvement was significant. He has been the one to spearhead Iranian military activism in the Middle East, and in January 2012 he declared that the Islamic Republic controlled “one way or another” Iraq and South Lebanon. Even before recent events in Syria, observers in the Arab world have been warning for years about growing evidence of “Iranian expansionism.”
• An important expression of Syria’s centrality in Iranian strategy was voiced by Mehdi Taaib, who heads Khamenei’s think tank. He recently stated that “Syria is the 35th district of Iran and it has greater strategic importance for Iran than Khuzestan [an Arab-populated province inside Iran].” Significantly, Taaib was drawing a comparison between Syria and a district that is under full Iranian sovereignty.
• Tehran has had political ambitions with respect to Syria for years and has indeed invested huge resources in making Syria a Shi’ite state. The Syrian regime let Iranian missionaries work freely to strengthen the Shi’ite faith in Damascus and the cities of the Alawite coast, as well as the smaller towns and villages. In both urban and rural parts of Syria, Sunnis and others who adopted the Shi’ite faith received privileges and preferential treatment in the disbursement of Iranian aid money.
• Iran is also recruiting Shi’ite forces in Iraq for warfare in Syria, which are organized in a sister framework of Lebanese Hezbollah. Known as the League of the Righteous People and Kateeb Hezbollah, its mission is to defend the Shi’ite centers in Damascus. It is likely that Tehran will make every effort to recruit additional Shi’ite elements from Iraq, the Persian Gulf and even from Pakistan.
Iran cannot afford to lose Syria In mid-April, Nasrallah paid a secret visit to Tehran where he met with the top Iranian officials headed by Khamenei and Suleimani, who is in charge of Iranian policy in Lebanon and Syria. The visit was clandestine and no details were divulged on an official level – except for the exclusive posting on Hezbollah’s official website of a photograph of Khamenei with Nasrallah beside him in the former’s private library, with a picture of Ayatollah Khomeini above them.
Suleimani’s involvement in the meeting with Nasrallah was significant. He initiated Iranian military activism in the Middle East, and in January 2012 he declared that the Islamic Republic controlled “one way or another” Iraq and South Lebanon. He now appeared to be prepared to extend Iran’s control to all of Syria.
A media source normally hostile to Iran and Hezbollah but which nonetheless contains accurate information, reported that Iran has formulated an operational plan for assisting Syria. The plan has been named for Suleimani, and includes three elements: (1) The establishment of a popular sectarian army made up of Shi’ites and Alawites, to be backed by forces from Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah, and symbolic contingents from the Persian Gulf; (2) This force will reach 150,000 fighters; and (3) The plan will give preference to importing forces from Iran, Iraq, and only afterwards, other Shi’ite elements. This regional force will be integrated with the Syrian army.
Suleimani himself visited Syria in late February-early March to prepare for the implementation of this plan.
In the past, senior Iranian officers, like Maj.-Gen. ahya Rahim-Safavi, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards who is an adviser to Khamenei, have said that Lebanon and Syria gave Iran “strategic depth.” Now it appears that Tehran is taking this a step further, preparing for a “Plan B” in the event Syrian President Bashar Assad falls.
Nasrallah rarely makes such trips. The last time he went on a visit outside Lebanon was in February 2010, when he met in Damascus with Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Nasrallah has taken great care not to appear in public since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and even more so since the assassination of the head of Hezbollah’s military wing, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus in February 2008.
Even in Iran itself, Nasrallah maintained total secrecy for fear of becoming an assassination target there.
After the visit, he gave a speech in Lebanon on April 30, but did not say anything about his visit to Iran. He did remark that Syria “has real friends” that wouldn’t let it fall, implying that if necessary he would redouble his efforts to defend Iranian interests, which has always been one of the missions of Hezbollah.
It appears that the terrorist group’s ongoing involvement in Syria and the extent of this involvement formed the main issue on the agenda during Nasrallah’s visit to Tehran. The more time passes, the more Iran appears to regard Syria as a linchpin of its Middle Eastern policy in general, and of leading the jihad and the Islamic resistance to Israel in particular.
Hezbollah’s inclusion in the armed struggle in Syria is intended first and foremost to serve the Iranian strategy, which has been setting new goals apart from military assistance to the Syrian regime.
Iran already seems to be looking beyond the regime’s survivability and preparing for a reality where it will have to operate in Syria even if Assad is toppled. Even before recent events in Syria, observers in the Arab world have been warning for years about growing evidence of Iranian expansionism.
An important expression of Syria’s centrality in Iranian strategy was voiced by Mehdi Taaib, who heads Khamenei’s think tank. He recently stated that “Syria is the 35th district of Iran and it has greater strategic importance for Iran than Khuzestan [an Arab-populated province inside Iran]. By preserving Syria we will be able to get back Khuzestan, but if we lose Syria we will not even be able to keep Tehran.”
Significantly, Taaib was drawing a comparison between Syria and a district that is under full Iranian sovereignty. What was also clear from his remarks was that Iran cannot afford to lose Syria.
Syria as a Shi’ite state All in all, then, Iran will have to step up its military involvement in Syria. Khamenei’s representative in Lebanon will have to take part in building the new strategy in Syria, acting in tandem with Iran against the Sunni groups that threaten Iran’s interests there.
Tehran has had political ambitions with respect to Syria for years and has indeed invested huge resources in making Syria a Shi’ite state. The process began during the rule of Hafez Assad, when a far-reaching network was created of educational, cultural and religious institutions throughout Syria; it was further expanded during Bashar’s reign. The aim was to promote the Shi’ization of all regions of the Syrian state.
The Syrian regime let Iranian missionaries work freely to strengthen the Shi’ite faith in Damascus and the cities of the Alawite coast, as well as the smaller towns and villages. A field study by the European Union in the first half of 2006 found that the largest percentage of religious conversions to Shi’ism occurred in areas with an Alawite majority.
In both urban and rural parts of Syria, Sunnis and others who adopted the Shi’ite faith received privileges and preferential treatment in the disbursement of Iranian aid money. The heads of the tribes in the Raqqa area were invited by the Iranian ambassador in Damascus to visit Iran cost-free, and the Iranians doled out funds to the poor and financial loans to merchants who were never required to pay them back. The dimensions of the Iranian investment in Raqqa, which included elegant public buildings, mosques and husayniyyas (Shi’ite houses of prayer), were recently revealed by Sunni rebels, who took over the remote town and destroyed, plundered and removed all signs of the Iranian and Shi’ite presence there.
Iran also operates a cultural center in Damascus that it considers one of its most important and successful.
This center publishes works in Arabic, holds biweekly cultural events, and conducts seminars and conferences aimed at enhancing the Iranian cultural influence in the country. The Iranian cultural center is also responsible for the propagation and study of the Persian language in Syrian universities, including providing teachers.
Iran’s sponsorship of Shi’ite forces in Syria At present, bloody battles are being waged over the centers of Iranian influence in Syria, most of all the mausoleum of Sayyida Zaynab – sister of the Imam Husayn – who in 680 carried his severed head to Damascus after the massacre at Karbala. In Iranian historiography, the great victory over the Sunnis is marked in Damascus, in the form of a Shi’ite renaissance in the capital of the hated Umayyad Empire.
The Sunnis, however, are now threatening these Iranian achievements. Hezbollah has been recruited to the cause, with hundreds of its fighters coming to Syria from Lebanon. These fighters try to downplay their Hezbollah affiliation and instead identify themselves as the Abu El Fadl al-Abbas Brigades, named after the half-brother of the Imam Husayn.
Iran is also recruiting Shi’ite forces in Iraq for the warfare in Syria. These are organized in a sister framework of Lebanese Hezbollah. Known as the League of the Righteous People and Kateeb Hezbollah, its mission is to defend the Shi’ite centers in Damascus.
Hezbollah fighters are also operating in other areas, some of them beyond the Lebanese border, in the Shi’ite villages in Syrian territory on the way to Homs – thereby creating a sort of territorial continuity for ongoing Alawite control under Iranian influence. This continuity is strategically important to Iran, since it links Lebanon and Damascus to the Alawite coast. Iran aims to have a network of militias in place inside Syria to protect its vital interests, regardless of what happens to Assad.
The war in Syria persists with no decisive outcome on the horizon. Hezbollah’s battle losses are growing. Subhi al- Tufayli, the first head of Hezbollah who was dismissed from its leadership by Iran at the start of the 1990s, has been one of the prominent critics of the terrorist group’s involvement in Syria. Tufayli claimed that 138 Hezbollah fighters had been killed there, along with scores of wounded brought to hospitals in Lebanon. Burial ceremonies are frequently held in secret, sometimes at night, so as to avoid anger and resentment. These casualties, however, have not disappeared from sight, and the families have raised harsh questions about such unnecessary sacrifice that is not in the sacred framework of jihad against Israel, which is Hezbollah’s raison d’etre.
Tufayli, for his part, asserted that Hezbollah fighters who are killed in battle in Syria “are not martyrs” and “will go to hell.” Syria, he remarked, “is not Karbala” and the group’s men in Syria “are not fighters of the Imam [Husayn]. The oppressed and innocent Syrian people is Karbala and the members of the Syrian people are the children of Husayn and Zaynab.”
Tufayli went on to say that he “lauds the fathers and mothers who prevent their children from going to Syria and says to them that God’s blessing is with them.” He further pointed out that, legally speaking, no fatwa has been issued that permits Hezbollah’s participation in the war in Syria. He said he had appealed to the supreme religious authority – the sources of emulation (Maraji Taqlid) in Najaf and in Lebanon – not to issue such a fatwa.
In the Lebanese Shi’ite community, Tufayli is not alone in leveling severe criticism at Hezbollah’s role as an arm of Iran in Syria. Voices within Hezbollah itself are increasingly casting doubt on the wisdom of involving the movement on Assad’s side. Others refuse to go and fight in Syria, and there have already been desertions from Hezbollah’s ranks.
So far, though, it does not appear that all this is deterring Hezbollah from persisting.
At the end of the day, Hezbollah is not a Lebanese national movement but a creation of Iran – and is subject to its exclusive authority. Nasrallah was summoned to Tehran so as to encourage him and order him to continue as a faithful and obedient soldier of Velayat-e Faqih (literally “the Rule of the Jurisprudent,” referring to Khamenei).
It is likely that Tehran will make every effort to recruit additional Shi’ite elements from Iraq, the Persian Gulf and even from Pakistan. For the Islamic Republic, this is a war of survival against a radical Sunni uprising that views Iran and the Shi’ites as infidels to be annihilated.
This is the real war being waged today, and it is within Islam. From Iran’s standpoint, if the extreme Sunnis of the al-Qaida persuasion are not defeated in Syria, they will assert themselves in Iraq and threaten to take over the Persian Gulf, posing a real danger to Iran’s regional hegemony.
Khamenei does not intend to give in.
Hezbollah’s readiness to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Iran against the radical Sunnis could shatter the delicate internal order upon which the Lebanese state is based, and bring about a Hezbollah takeover of Lebanon in its entirety. ■ Brig.-Gen. (res.) Dr. Shimon Shapira is a senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.