“Iran’s Supreme Leader has permitted a limited group of Iranian youth to fight along with “Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese brothers,” according to Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammed Ali Jafari. Jafari, while addressing a ceremony in Tehran last Friday, mentioned discussions he had with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, saying that “despite the number of youth who are permitted to join the fighting (outside Iran), no one else should leave the country” for resistance abroad, the Iranian Mashregh news agency reported……………”
Everybody has known for some time that there are Iranian advisers, and maybe some combatants, serving in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State and other armed groups. We have all seen ‘leaked’ photos of the enigmatic Brig. Suleimani in Iraq. Everybody has also known that there are Arab, American, and European fighters and advisers on both sides in Iraq and Syria. Some of the latter are official with the regulation boots, others who are mainly on the Jihadi side are free-lancers. This new report about Ayatollah Khamenei makes things ‘official’ now. Especially in view of the potential casualties which are impossible to hide in a Muslim society where a death and its rites are a very public matter.
Officially the wars in Syria and Iraq are now part of a multi-layered wider war: a sectarian war within a regional war within a global war. Which they have been for some years now, but unofficially. Now which box should be opened first? Which layer should be peeled first to reach the heart of the matter and solve it?
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum 