At a meeting in
Moscow in July, a top Iranian general unfurled a map of Syria to explain
to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar
al-Assad could be turned into victory - with Russia's help. Major
General Qassem Soleimani's visit to Moscow was the first step in
planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the
Syrian war and forged a new Iranian-Russian alliance in support of
Assad. As Russian
warplanes bomb rebels from above, the arrival of Iranian special forces
for ground operations underscores several months of planning between
Assad's two most important allies, driven by panic at rapid insurgent
gains. Soleimani is the commander
of the Quds Force, the elite extra-territorial special forces arm of
Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and reports directly to Iran's Supreme
Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Senior
regional sources say he has already been overseeing ground operations
against insurgents in Syria and is now at the heart of planning for the
new Russian- and Iranian-backed offensive. That
expands his regional role as the battlefield commander who has also
steered the fight in neighboring Iraq by Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia
against Islamic State. His Moscow
meeting outlined the deteriorating situation in Syria, where rebel
advances toward the coast were posing a danger to the heartland of
Assad's Alawite sect, where Russia maintains its only Mediterranean
naval base in Tartous. "Soleimani
put the map of Syria on the table. The Russians were very alarmed, and
felt matters were in steep decline and that there were real dangers to
the regime. The Iranians assured them there is still the possibility to
reclaim the initiative," a senior regional official said. "At that time,
Soleimani played a role in assuring them that we haven't lost all the
cards." "SEND SOLEIMANI" Three
senior officials in the region say Soleimani's July trip was preceded
by high-level Russian-Iranian contacts that produced political agreement
on the need to pump in new support for Assad as his losses accelerated. Their accounts
suggest planning for the intervention began to germinate several months
earlier. It means Tehran and Moscow had been discussing ways to prop up
Assad by force even as Western officials were describing what they
believed was new flexibility in Moscow's stance on his future. Before
the latest moves, Iran had aided Assad militarily by mobilizing Shi'ite
militias to fight alongside the Syrian army, and dispatching Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps officers as advisors. A number of them have
been killed. Russia, an ally of
Damascus since the Cold War, had supplied weapons to the Syrian army and
shielded Damascus diplomatically from Western attempts to sanction
Assad at the United Nations. Their
support did not prevent rebels - some of them backed by Assad's
regional foes - from reducing Assad's control of Syria to around one
fifth of its territory in a four-year-long war estimated to have killed
250,000 people. The decision for a
joint Iranian-Russian military effort in Syria was taken at a meeting
between Russia's foreign minister and Khamenei a few months ago, said a
senior official of a country in the region, involved in security
matters. "Soleimani,
assigned by Khamenei to run the Iranian side of the operation, traveled
to Moscow to discuss details. And he also traveled to Syria several
times since then," the official said. The
Russian government says its Syria deployment came as the result of a
formal request from Assad, who himself laid out the problems facing the
Syrian military in stark terms in July, saying it faced a manpower
problem. Khamenei also sent a
senior envoy to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin, another senior
regional official said. "Putin told him 'Okay we will intervene. Send
Qassem Soleimani'. He went to explain the map of the theater." RESIDENT IN DAMASCUS Russian warplanes, deployed at an airfield in Latakia, began mounting air strikes against rebels in Syria last week. Moscow says it is
targeting Islamic State, but many of Russia's air strikes have hit other
insurgents, including groups backed by Assad's foreign enemies, notably
in the northwest where rebels seized strategically important towns
including Jisr al-Shughour earlier this year. In
the biggest deployment of Iranian forces yet, sources told Reuters last
week that hundreds of troops have arrived since late September to take
part in a major ground offensive planned in the west and northwest. Around
3,000 fighters from the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah have
also mobilized for the battle, along with Syrian army troops, said one
of the senior regional sources. The
military intervention in Syria is set out in an agreement between
Moscow and Tehran that says Russian air strikes will support ground
operations by Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces, said one of
the senior regional sources. The
agreement also included the provision of more sophisticated Russian
weapons to the Syrian army, and the establishment of joint operations
rooms that would bring those allies together, along with the government
of Iraq, which is allied both to Iran and the United States. One of the operations rooms is in Damascus and another is in Baghdad. "Soleimani
is almost resident in Damascus, or let's say he goes there a lot and
you can find him between meetings with President Assad and visits to the
theater of operations like any other soldier," said one of the senior
regional officials. Syria's foreign minister said on Monday that the Russian air strikes had been planned for months.
How Iranian general plotted out Syrian assault in Moscow

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