Iran will weigh sending troops to Syria if President Bashar Al-Assad requested such a move to stop a rebel advance that’s causing the biggest threat to his rule in years, Report informs via Bloomberg.
“If the Syrian government wants us to deploy troops in Syria, we’ll consider their request,” Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said to the UK-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
Syria’s military is trying to push back fighters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda that launched a surprise assault from the northwest of the country last week. They managed to capture Aleppo, one of Syria’s biggest cities, are advancing on Hama, roughly halfway toward the capital, Damascus.
Iran and Russia are the main foreign powers backing Assad and would be loath to see him toppled. Iran has many officers, including from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, stationed in Syria advising the government. Iranian state media reported that Tehran has already decided to dispatch more IRGC officers to Syria.
At the peak of Tehran’s intervention in the Syrian civil war around 2015-2018, it had thousands of troops there. They, along with Russian forces and Hezbollah fighters from neighboring Lebanon, were crucial in turning the tide in the conflict in Assad’s favor.
Amid the renewed chaos in the north of Syria, Turkish-backed rebels also captured Tal Rifat, which is close to Aleppo, according to Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu. That’s a blow to US-allied Kurdish forces who had been holding the town.
Though Assad has held most of Syria’s major cities for the past eight years or so, many areas of the country are ruled by opposition groups.