Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani promised on May 31 following a visit to the front lines in Syria that in the next few days the world will be “pleasantly surprised” by what the IRGC is preparing with Syrian military commanders. The pro-Syrian regime newspaper as-Safir reported on June 3 that 20,000 Iranian and Iraqi fighters were moving in to defend Damascus and prepare for a counter-offensive in northwestern Syria. Other sources place the number at 15,000 or 17,000 fighters. If true, it could signal a notable shift in Iranian regional strategy with potentially far-reaching implications.
Recent losses on the battlefield by its allies in Damascus and Baghdad have pushed Iran into a tight spot. As I argued last week, Tehran appears to be doubling down in its efforts to prop up both the Syrian and Iraqi regimes rather than cut its losses.
Damascus is the lynchpin of a Resistance Network that includes Lebanese Hezbollah, and supports proxy and terrorist groups in confronting and deterring Israel and the United States. Since the Arab uprisings began in 2011, preserving President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has been Iran’s primary external security concern. The fall of Mosul to ISIS in June 2014 changed all that. Iran suddenly found defending its border with Iraq and preserving a friendly government in Baghdad to be its main priorities in the midst of an existential security crisis.
Soleimani sent most of the Iraqi Shia militia forces he had built up and deployed for the defense of Damascus back to Iraq in the summer of 2014. Returning some of these groups to Syria a year later—at a time when the Shia militias are playing a critical role retaking ISIS held positions—is an indication of just how dire the situation looks to Tehran.
More importantly, if the reports of 15,000 Iranian (presumably IRGC) “fighters” at the core of Soleimani’s new contingent are true, we could be seeing a fundamental change in Iran’s strategic behavior. Likely thousands of IRGC forces have already played critical roles in almost all aspects of the Syrian regime’s campaign, including advising, strategy development, training, weapons and munitions supply, logistics, intelligence, the building of Syrian paramilitary and militia forces, and the coordination of Lebanese Hezbollah operations. This is the new Iranian “hybrid” warfare we have seen develop in Iraq over the past 12 months.
Unlike Hezbollah, however, IRGC officers have not been the trigger-pullers in either theater. (Readers who follow the debate between President Obama and his congressional critics over “boots on the ground” in Iraq should understand this distinction well.) Since the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian military forces have avoided direct action beyond their borders, preferring others do their fighting for them. This is a core tenet of Iranian doctrine. IRGC or other Iranian forces directly engaging in combat in Syria would represent a shift away from a fundamentally defensive state, to one willing and able to engage in expeditionary warfare—even if worsening threat perceptions rather than expansionary aspirations drives the change. This would represent a sea change in Tehran’s strategic thinking, and a very worrisome surprise for the United States and our allies.
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