It has been reported that Mohammad Bagheri, the Iran regime’s Chief of Staff, travelled to Damascus, the Syrian capital in an effort to show that there is unity between Iran’s regime and the Syrian president Bashar al Assad’s regime.
It was also meant as a way of showing cooperation between Shia allies in the fight against the Islamic State group and the opposition fighters and that it has been successful and fruitful.
General Bagheri met with his Syrian counterpart General Ali Abdullah Ayoub and they spoke about the main principles of cooperation between the two nations.
However, Iran’s visit to Damascus was not as positive as it had hoped it would be. Iran had requested a lease of at least 50 years on a naval base in the Mediterranean. Iran had also requested that it be allowed to set up numerous air bases at various different areas in the country and it also requested permission to mine phosphates (including uranium).
Iran regime had gone to Damascus certain that its demands would not be questioned. After all, Iran had been propping up the Syrian dictator since the beginning of the civil war there. Anything that Assad or his regime needed, Iran was there to supply it – weapons, arms, personnel, training, extensive financing, credit lines, and so on. Its proxy Hezbollah has also plays a very big role in supporting Assad.
Yet, this is not the way it happened. Syria did not bow down to Iran’s list of demands. The requests have not been outright denied, but there were certainly no promises to honour them. The Syrian regime appears to want to give the impression that it is not just a puppet to Iran, as it has been described by many Western leaders and of course Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Nevertheless, it does not mean that Syria is going to stand up against Iran, it just indicates that Syria is very aware that if Iran had even more of a presence there, the country could eventually end up in a confrontation with Israel.
Officials in Israel have pointed their fingers at the Syrian president, saying that he will be to blame for any disputes that spill across the border into Israel, emphasising time and time again that there is no need for Iran to be in Syria.
It is very true that there is no need for Iran to be in Syria. Iran has been involved, or rather interfering, in the Syrian civil war since it started in 2011. Iran has spent billions and billions of dollars on keeping the war going – a war that would have ended many years ago if it had not intervened.
Its main militia, Hezbollah, has trained the Syrian regime’s troops and there have been a large number of casualties on all sides of the bloody war. Iran has lost hundreds of its own soldiers including a number of generals. There have also been heavy losses for the Lebanese Hezbollah and other pro-Iran groups on the ground.
Source » ncr-iran