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| Gen Soleimani meeting with Badr members in Diyala Soleimani became the face of the Iranian intervention in Syria and Iraq (Rudaw) |
Author Tom Cooper has written a dozen books on the Middle East. Two of his most recent were Syrian Conflagration: The Syrian Civil War, 2011-2013 and Moscow’s Game of Poker: Russian Military Intervention in Syria, 2015-2017. While doing his research he has studied the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s (IRGC) presence in both Syria and Iraq. The Iranians played a huge role in both conflicts on the battlefield and in the media promoting itself. This is an interview with Tom Cooper about the Revolutionary Guard and its Iraqi allies.
1. It seems like
there are some parallels to be drawn between the Revolutionary Guards’
experience in the Iran-Iraq War and the Syrian War. In both cases, the
organization suffered heavy losses initially, and then eventually learned how
to adapt. It also created a mythology about its involvement that exaggerated
its accomplishments. What is your assessment of how the IRGC has done in the war?
There are quite a few of parallels, principally because the
Iran-Iraq War fought from 1980-1988 was of fundamental importance for the
emergence and build-up of the IRGC in the form as we know it nowadays. That
conflict was the IRGC’s elementary school, high-school, college and university
all at once.
Early during the Iran-Iraq War, the IRGC was first a small,
amateurish armed force designed to protect the new government in Tehran. It was
only over the years that it grew into a massive military organization with big
conventional formations, flying- and naval branches, capable of waging
large-scale offensive operations against Iraq on its own. Finally, it was
during that war that the IRGC learned that, in order to safeguard the power of
cliques making it, it had to impose itself in control of the entire Iranian
society through imposing itself in control of its economy, too.
A similar process can be monitored in Syria since 2011.
Certainly enough, Tehran maintained close ties to the Assad government already
since the early 1980s, when Damascus began supporting Tehran during the
Iran-Iraq War, while Tehran became involved in the build-up of Hezbollah as a ‘protector’
of the Shi’a minority in Lebanon but especially as a counter to the Israeli
occupation of that country. However, while the Assad government developed into
the closest Iranian ally in the Middle East, prompting numerous Iranian
officials to publicly declare its survival for their ‘red line’, it was never
directly subjected to its control – which is now the case since the period
2012-2015: at earlier times a small group of IRGC officers acted as links to
Maher al-Assad – the key Syrian figure in the alliance with the IRGC and Hezbollah – and was busy controlling the flow
of arms sent from Iran to Lebanon, but also to the Syrian military.
When the Syrians rose against the Assad government in 2011, several
relatively small groups of IRGC’s advisors (perhaps 200 in total) with fresh
experience from brutally smashing similar protests in Iran of 2009, were
deployed to advise the local ‘security services’. Before long, the situation
went out of control and thus, according to Iranian sources interviewed on
condition of anonymity, this deployment was increased to two small brigades during
the summer of 2012. Entirely staffed by Iranian nationals, these initially
served the purpose of defending the Sayyida Zaynab district of southern
Damascus against Syrian insurgents. They suffered extensive losses during the
second half of that year. Because Tehran was ill-positioned to publicly
acknowledge its military intervention in Syria – both because of continuous
unrest at home, and because of concerns over a possible reaction for the West –
but also because the uprising continued to grow and spread, the IRGC then made
the decision to massively expand its intervention ‘through other means’. Tehran
began providing massive loans to the Assad government in return for concessions
related to economic privileges; on the military plan, and in attempt of
minimizing the IRGC’s footprint, it simultaneously ordered the
Hezbollah/Lebanon to intervene in Syria, replaced its own units with those of
the Iraqi Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, and then – and in cooperation with Maher’s
Hossn Association – launched the process of creating local surrogates in form
of the scams like ‘National Defence Forces’, ‘Local Defence Forces’ and others,
nominally in order to bolster the regular Syrian military, but actually with
the aim of completely replacing them with a ‘popular’, Basiji-style, volunteer
force.
In regards of how the IRGC has done in the war: generally,
the performance of IRGC-Quds Force (QF)-commanded units in the Syrian War can
be characterized as ‘quite uneven’. The two original brigades deployed in
southern Damascus suffered extensive losses before learning their lessons.
Nevertheless, by late 2012, they proved capable of running nocturnal assault
operations in urban areas – which is one of most demanding kind of infantry
operations. For most of 2013-2014, performance of units commanded by IRGC-QF ‘s
officers was usually dictated by being ‘lucrative’, and thus relatively poor on
average. Some operations did demonstrate advanced skills, including the
capability to run heliborne commando attacks in the enemy rear. Foremost, many
of large-scale operations were disturbed by rivalry with the few surviving
regular Syrian military formations. Both the ‘government’ in Damascus and the
IRGC-QF were short on supplies as of 2013-2014. Whenever the IRGC-QF launched
an offensive in the period 2013-2014, an array of government commanders tended
to launch competing operations, in attempt to prove their ‘value’ and ‘loyalty’
– in turn dooming the IRGC’s designs to fail.
Where the IRGC-QF-commanded formations did better was in
Homs of early 2013; during the offensive to lift the siege of western Aleppo,
in autumn 2013; and while recovering large parts of southern Damascus, and then
laying siege to several resulting pockets, in 2013-2014. Contrary to the usual
style of their operations – most of which depended on superior firepower and
frontal assaults – these offensives were often imaginative, included elements
of flanking movements, helicopter deployment of commandos behind enemy lines,
and others. In turn, by 2015 – when IRGC-QF-commanded formations took away all
the (Soviet-made) T-72s from whatever was left of the regular Syrian military,
and then acquired additional T-72Bs and T-90s from Russia – their performance
degenerated to that of frontal assaults. Several negative experiences from that
year also made IRGC-QF’s commanders much more cautious in their conduct of
operations than was the case at earlier times. Similar it is valid for their
experiences of the last two years: indeed, it can be said the force is de-facto
re-learning many of its earlier lessons while fighting the Daesh in eastern
Syria.
2. The Iranians
eventually brought in their Iraqi allies into Syria. Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, Kataib
Hezbollah, Badr, etc. all sent men and new groups were created as well. How
were they used, and how did they do in the fighting?
The deployment of diverse Iraqi militias in Syria took place
under the aegis of the IRGC-QF, and must be viewed within the context of what
this force was (and still is) doing in the country, but also within the context
of what is going on in Syria.
Already back in 2012, Tehran – i.e. crucial ideologists of
the IRGC in Iran – brought the decision to intervene in Syria in following
ways:
- prevent
a downfall of the Assad government through financing it and declaring its
survival ‘Iran’s Red Line’ in Syria;
- order
Hezbollah/Lebanon into combat in Syria to buy time;
- deploy
militias consisting of its proxies (whether from Iraq or elsewhere) for similar
reasons (i.e. to buy time); unless
- local/domestic
‘popular forces’ could be created inside that could – at least nominally –
fight on behalf of the government (but, actually, on behalf of Tehran), and
thus safeguard Iran’s influence in the long term, and even in the case of a
downfall of the Assad government.
These are the fundamentals along which the IRGC-QF is
operating in Syria ever since. Correspondingly, Tehran not only began funding
the Assad government with billions in crude oil and cash (reportedly, Damascus
was receiving an equivalent of US$1-1.5 billion a month, from summer 2012 until
at least October 2015), but also creating local systems of theological
education through which the IRGC is ‘embedding’ itself within the local
population, and establishing diverse militias officially designated the
National Defence Force, Local Defence Force and similar. Aware of the fact that
it might take years to not only form loyal local proxies into units capable of
carrying the burden of the war, but especially to grow an entirely new
generation of Syrians that would follow
its orders, the IRGC-QF was in need of forces that would ‘buy time’.
This is why formations like Assaib Ahl al-Haq began to
emerge – initially in southern Damascus, in summer 2012 – with the official
task of ‘defending the Shrine of Sayyida Zaynab’. Of course, this remained the official
explanation for sending all the other militias of the Iraqi Shi’a to Syria,
especially so in autumn 2015, when their number grew to nearly 60 diverse
formations: by that time, these forces formed at least 30% of the effective
fighting force on all the major frontlines in central and southern Syria, and
up to 80-90% of effective fighting forces nominally fighting ‘for Assad’
anywhere north of Hama, but especially in the Aleppo area. By late 2017 and
early 2018, IRGC-QF-controlled forces were making out up to 95% of combatants
assaulting such areas like eastern Idlib province, not to talk about operations
against the Daesh in diverse parts of eastern Syria.
In regards of how were Iraqi militias used and how did they
perform: this depended on the type and size of formation, their training and
equipment, but also their political backgrounds. Some of units had excellent
training and equipment, and were used as ‘special forces’. Formations
associated with the Badr Movement in Iraq seem to have been considered ‘not
particularly reliable’ and to have served only relatively short stints in Syria:
the presence of most of them was identified only during a relatively short
period of high-intensity combat operations between October 2015 and March 2016.
Most of them served as ‘light infantry’ and seem not to have left any lasting
impressions of the battlefield.
On the contrary, together with units staffed by IRGC’s
proxies from elsewhere – especially the Liwa Fatimiyoun (staffed by the
children of Afghan Hazara refugees that grew up in Iran) - formations like
Harakat al-Nujba and Kata’ib Hezbollah (eventually merged into the Harakat
Hezbollah al-Nujba) formed the backbone of many of major offensives. Correspondingly,
they were the best-equipped, too. Notable in this regards is that the IRGC-QF
took away all the (Soviet-made) T-72 main battle tanks left in surviving
formations of the Syrian military (except those operated by Maher’s 4th
Division) and assigned these to its own units (foremost the Liwa Fatimiyoun,
which was eventually expanded into a ‘division’ of four ‘brigades’). Similarly,
the IRGC-QF bolstered the Harakat al-Nujba and Kata’ib Hezbollah through the
acquisition of 24 T-90s and a similar number of T-72Bs from Russia: unsurprisingly,
these units played the crucial role during the offensives into the southern
Aleppo province, in autumn 2015; on Nobol and Zahra in February 2016; and
during the siege of western Aleppo, all through the rest of that year.
3. As soon as Mosul
fell in Iraq in 2014, the Iranians sent in IRGC elements to assist Baghdad. It
attempted to take the lead in the war as well, which was given extra emphasis
since the Americans were there too. Part of that effort was based upon pushing
the militias it backed, which became part of the Hashd al-Shaabi, to take the
lead in the fighting. In the battle of Tikrit, Tehran and the pro-Iran Hashd
wanted to prove that they could retake a major city, and demanded that U.S. air
power not be involved. That failed miserably and the Iraqi army and police took
over backed by American air strikes. Do you have any insights into what
happened in that operation?
The fall of Mosul and the ‘spill’ of Daesh into
north-western Iraq seems to have had much more massive consequences for Tehran
than usually known. Contemporary reports from Iran before the summer of 2014 were
indicating a country on the verge of bankruptcy, where even the activity of the
IRGC was minimalized in order to save money.
Daesh’s advance changed all of this ‘over night’: even the
USA looked the other way when not only did Baghdad place huge orders for
Iranian-made arms and ammunition and then requested support from of the
IRGC-QF’s military presence in the country, but also while the Kurds in
northern Iraq began receiving training and arms from the regular Iranian
military. I.e. Tehran suddenly found itself in a position to publicly
demonstrate its might and influence all over Iraq.
In light of these developments, but also because many
Western observers began framing the IRGC-QF as some sort of an ‘elite’ force, the
idea was born in Tehran to demonstrate its combat effectiveness, and the
effectiveness of the entire concept of ‘Islamic mobilisation’ of the locals.
That’s how come the – much famed, at least in the West – Major-General
Soleimani was ordered to command the IRGC-QF-controlled forces responsible for
recovering Tikrit, and to recover that city from the Daesh without any kind of
US support. Yes, he failed, and yes, miserably at that: he proved himself
unable to plan and run a complex military operation and liberate Tikrit. One
can argue whether his task in that case was realistic or not, but the fact is
that it took the Iraqi army and police, and plenty of US support, to recover
the city. The IRGC-QF proved unable of doing this on its own. According to
sources in Iran, the consequence was that Soleimani was dismissed from his
command and is ever since playing no role in planning and conduct of combat
operations – whether in Iraq or in Syria.
4. Another part of
the Iranian effort in both Syria and Iraq was its propaganda campaign. A major
element of that was to promote Iranian Revolution Guards’ Quds Force commander
General Soleimani. He was photographed everywhere across both countries turning
him into a social media star. What was Soleimani’s role in the two wars
compared to the mythology created around him?
Iranian sources related to the IRGC stress that Soleimani
never played as crucial a role as a planner and decision-maker as many usually
credited him for. No doubt, especially diverse Iraqi political figures are
de-facto ‘scared’ of him. However, according to sources within the IRGC,
Soleimani was actually always a ‘mere executor’ of orders from the Supreme
Leader and the Supreme Revolutionary Council (forwarded via Vahid Haghanian, a
civilian serving as a liaison officer connecting the top ranks of the Iranian
leadership with the top ranks of the IRGC). Indeed, one of the sources in
question went as far as to stress that Soleimani ‘can’t tie his shoelaces
without permission from Tehran’.
Thus, while certainly an ‘intimidating’ figure to many in
Iraq, there is at least a question mark over how much was Soleimani really
‘the’ figure planning and running so many of the developments in Iraq of the
last 15-17 years – as often claimed by diverse observers in the USA, but in
Israel too.
Soleimani is still present, no doubt. Indeed, it seems that
Tehran is still maintaining an official line along which he remains the
commander of the IRGC-QF, too. Thus, he is travelling widely in Iraq and in
Syria, talking to the troops, letting them take ‘selfies’ with him. However,
his actual role should be that of bolstering the morale of the combatants and
intimidating diverse political opponents: multiple Iranian sources stress that
the command and control of all the IRGC-QF’s formations on the battlefields in
Iraq and Syria are exercised by other officers than Soleimani since 2015.
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