Iran’s “silent” preparation for a war in Syria — “Iraq is the buffer state”

Mil­i­tary

We already reported that Iran threat­ened Turkey to enter a war along­side Syria, and yes­ter­day Iraq did its tiny bit by issu­ing a ban in Turk­ish air­planes from land­ing on its territory.

In an oper­a­tion called “Destroy­ing the Illu­sion”, Syr­ian army estab­lished a 20 km mil­i­tary zone, deployed thou­sands of tanks, artillery and mis­siles along the bor­ders with Turkey and Jor­dan. That is few hours after the arrival of an Iran­ian mil­i­tary advis­ers del­e­ga­tion in an offi­cial visit to Syria. Notice that the above link says that there is no need to deploy the Syr­ian army near the Iraq-Syria bor­der because there is no pres­ence of gun­men in the area.

Few days ago, Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad in a meet­ing with the Iraqi Army Chief of Staff Gen. Babakir Zebari, stressed that the Iraqi and Iran­ian peo­ple have long enjoyed close ties in the face of what he called “the forces of arro­gance”. This announce­ment from Ahmadine­jad came days after Iran urged Iraq to mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion “against the com­mon ene­mies in the region and beyond”.

Since then, there are many reports of the esca­lat­ing arms smug­gling from Iran to Shi­ite mili­tias in Iraq.

Iraqi mil­i­tary sources revealed that the Iran­ian Chief of Staff for­mally expressed Iran’s readi­ness to man­age the Iraqi mil­i­tary bases that are aban­doned by the US troops after the withdrawal.

The sources indi­cated that Iran had asked the Iraqi gov­ern­ment to con­trol all air bases as quickly as pos­si­ble because Iran is con­cerned that some air bases with large run­ways can be used by the for­eign warplanes.

polit­i­cally and logistically

Bagh­dad is not only offi­cially opposes the inter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of the Syr­ian cri­sis and the impos­ing an eco­nomic sanc­tion on Dam­as­cus, the Iraqi gov­ern­ment even promised Syria and Iran to pre­vent the flow of weapons from Iraq to Syria and to pre­vent Syr­ian refugees from cross­ing the Iraq-Syria bor­der. Maliki’s posi­tion irri­tated the US say­ing [link above]:

The Iraqi gov­ern­ment came under pres­sure from a regional state to sup­port Assad regime at the time the whole world is bet­ting on the demo­c­ra­tic change in Iraq.

UAE news­pa­per reported that Iran offered a coop­er­a­tion with the Sunni tribes in Anbar Province to pro­vide a safe pas­sage to sup­port Assad regime in Syria in exchange for Tehran sup­ports the Sun­nis demands from the Iraqi Government.

Iraqi gov­ern­ment received “orders” from Iran to open its media offices in the Syr­ian cap­i­tal Dam­as­cus, the media offices will be sup­ported finan­cially by Iran.

Reli­gious

There is no men­tion of Syria in Ammar Al-Hakim [leader of the Supreme Islamic Coun­cil, who is known with his con­nec­tions with Iran] in speech last Fri­day [that is the day after the Arab Leagues deci­sion to an ulti­ma­tum to Syria], but inter­est­ingly he asked to “reform” the AL in way that suits the cur­rent changes in Arab countries.

Muqatda Al-Sadr offi­cially is still in Iran-Qom but he released a “bizarre” posi­tion; He is sym­pa­thetic with the Syr­ian demon­stra­tors but let Assad’s regime stays.

Yet, pre­pared for the worst and in case of a regional war, all what Iran needs are few Supreme Cler­ics to declare Jihad [and not rely­ing on Sis­tani only]. This is reported a week ago by all Iraqi media:

10 Supreme-clerics Aya­tol­lahs arrived from Qom-Iran to set­tle per­ma­nently in Najaf-Iraq, among them Iraq’s Maliki “Dawa Party” new Supreme ref­er­ence Al-Shahrudi [after the death of the for­mer Dawa Party’s ref­er­ence Moham­mad Hus­sein Fad­lal­lah].

Why this is impor­tant? The name Aya­tol­lah Al-Shahrudi is asso­ci­ated with Mili­tias and guer­rilla war­fare. this is a tiny biography:

Asso­ci­ated with the reli­gious leader insti­tu­tion in Iran and has been appointed head of the judi­ciary in Iran for eight years and a mem­ber of the Guardian Coun­cil of Iran, as well as a mem­ber of the Expe­di­ency Dis­cern­ment Coun­cil in Iran.

He is the first leader of the Supreme Coun­cil of the Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iraq, and the archi­tect of the rela­tion between the Supreme Coun­cil and the Iran­ian author­i­ties from the 80’s until the fall of the Iraqi regime.