Iran consolidating its operations in Syria

Washington Times:

Iran’s top military officer signed agreements in Syria last month that will keep Iranian forces there indefinitely with a pledge to help the Bashar Assad regime rebuild damaged military bases, according to the main opposition group to Tehran’s Islamic rulers.

Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, who became the armed forces chief of staff last year, was photographed in Aleppo visiting Iranian forces and viewing other conflict areas, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Iran, and intense Russian aerial assaults, played a big role in what critics say was a brutal siege of the city that broke the back of anti-Assad rebel forces in the west.

Behind the scenes, Gen. Bagheri and his staff met three times with Mr. Assad and his high command, the National Council says in an intelligence report.

During Syria’s 6-year-old civil war, Tehran has deployed its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force operatives, as well as surrogate Shiite militias, some from Iraq. Iran justifies its growing — and apparently permanent — presence in Syria by claiming it is fighting the Islamic State and other Sunni terrorist armies.

If the National Council’s report is accurate, then Gen. Bagheri’s agreement signals that Iran is fulfilling a strategic goal of stretching a “Red Crescent” of domination west from Tehran through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to Israel’s doorstep.

“The trip was carried out to sign a formal military agreement with Assad dictatorship and to provide a legal and international justification for the presence of the IRGC in Syria and the reconstruction of some of Bashar’s weapons factories by the IRGC inside Syria,” said National Council spokesman Shahin Gobadi.
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Iran is turning Syria into a satrapy to expand its influence all the way to the borders of Israel.  It is planting the seeds of its next war where it will attempt to destroy Israel and the Sunni states in the region. 

It has the money to do this because of the really bad deal Obama struck with Iran on its nuclear program.  Not only did he supply Iran with billions of dollars but he lifted the sanctions which will allow it to continue to fund its ambitions of hegemony in the region.  It has to be the worst deal by a US President in history.

About the only upside to this deal is that Iran is putting more of its forces in the range of Israeli military operations.