"BEIRUT: Iran has sent 15,000 fighters to Syria to reverse recent battlefield setbacks for Syrian government troops and wants to achieve results by the end of the month, a Lebanese political source has told The Daily Star.
The militia force, made up of Iranians, Iraqis and Afghanis, the source said, have arrived in the Damascus region and in the coastal province of Latakia.
The source said the fighters are expected to spearhead an effort to seize areas of Idlib province, where the regime has suffered a string of defeats at the hands of a rebel-jihadi coalition.
Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds force, was in Latakia this week to shore up preparations for the campaign, the source said." Daily Star
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My SWAG is that this is just the beginning of a large scale Iranian intervention in the Syrian civil war.
The entry into the Syria war of a large number of Iranian Quds force led troops would be a game changer. Whether the fighters are Iranian, Iraqi or from the dark side of the moon their presence might well make a decisive change in the balance of combat power in Syria. This article mentions Iranian forces in the Damascus area. They would be useful there in clearing close suburbs of Islamist forces. The entry of Iranian forces in the Latakia region of the Alawi coastal homeland is also significant. Latakia is a significant port and a suitable port of entry for Iranian heavy equipment for defense of the Alawi homeland and the re-capture of Idlib Province.
As I recall the Russian Navy has a port facility at Latakia. Will the world community seek to blockade Latakia and other Syrian ports?
Hizbullah's Nasrallah has made it clear that his organization will continue to fight alongside the forces of the Syrian government. The fighting in the Qalamoun area in the anti-Lebanon mountains east of the Bekaa Valley seems to be going well from the point of view of the Syrian government, but the Islamist coalition of the "Army of Conquest" is making gains in the northwest while IS is attacking the Syrian government garrison at Hasakha in NE Syria.
The aggressive and largely successful IS campaign in Anbar Province continues with the latest development seeming to be a deliberate shutting off of Euphrates River water at the Ramadi Dam near that city. The media seem to think that a scarcity of water at Baghdad is the major threat from this but IMO a major fall in water levels in the river will make IS's movements north-south much easier against government positions south of the river.
There are rumors circulating of a countervailing "army" of Sunni jihadis being assembled in Turkey by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
We will see. We will see. pl
