Iran Ready To Send More Troops To Syria, But This Could Trigger Deeper Israeli Entry

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced Tuesday that Tehran is ready to consider sending more troops to Syria if the request is made by the Assad government in Damascus.

"If the Syrian government asks Iran to send troops to Syria, we will consider the request," Araghchi was quoted as saying by the Qatar-based outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, which was later picked up by Reuters. Iran is preparing "a series of steps to calm the situation in Syria and find an opportunity to present an initiative for a permanent solution," he said additionally.

Araghchi suggested more troops to defend Syria would be necessary for broader regional stability given that the takeover of Syrian territory by terrorist groups "may harm Syria’s neighboring countries such as Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey more than Iran."

Tehran is willing to "consult and dialogue" with Turkey over regional differences, and its leaders will soon hold direct talks again with Russian President Vladimir Putin to coordinate a response.

Iran has of course long had troops in Syria assisting Assad forces, but any kind of bigger surge of Iranian and IRGC troops is sure to be noticed in a big way by Israel.

Israel has already been bombing Syria on a weekly basis, ostensibly as part of efforts to thwart pro-Iranian assets in the Levant region. If the Islamic Republic sends more of its troops this would likely trigger greater direct Israeli military intervention.

While rumors and speculation have abounded over the degree to which Israeli intelligence is actively helping in the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) takeover of the northwest, all of this could hasten much more direct levels of assistance by Israel to the anti-Assad insurgency.

While Israeli support to the Sunni extremists happened earlier in the war of the past decade (in the south of Syria), any support to HTS would prove deeply awkward given Washington has since formally designated the HTS group a terrorist organization. 

Sunni terror groups have long sought to push out any Shia groups from all of Syria:

But such a legal designations has never stopped the NATO-Gulf-Israeli axis in prior years of fighting in Syria from aiding terror proxies. The strategic fault lines laid out in Seymour Hersh's foundational text The Redirection are still clearly at play.

Here's what the legendary journalist wrote all the way back in 2007, predicting the entirety of the Syrian proxy war:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. 

...This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

'Salafis throwing bombs' is precisely what played out in Aleppo days ago. The new war has has now reportedly entered the gates of the central city of Hama, where pro-Syria forces are once again battling the black-clad well-armed jihadists.

Dramatic video which emerged from Hama on Tuesday shows the HTS targeting Syrian national forces with a drone equipped with a large munition:

Currently, pro-Iranian militias are coming across the border from Iraq to assist national forces. These numbers are said to be limited, in the hundreds and counting, but if a large enough movement of Shia forces begins, this could trigger Israel and Turkey's greater intervention. As for Turkey in particular, it is also without doubt using the HTS fanatics to ethnically cleanse northern Syria of Kurds.