The IRGC and the new tasks in Syria
In an escalation that is not new, the auxiliary military formations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intensified their operations in the regions of north and east Syria, as they brought in advanced weapons and missiles and expanded their bases and military airports in north and east Syria and stationed their intelligence and military at Qamishli Airport, in addition to the recently established base in the eastern countryside of Raqqa and the establishment of more information-gathering centers, which are considered the most important tools regarding the ability to move within its areas of presence, in addition to intensifying its media discourse about the threat of launching more military operations against the Global Coalition forces and its allies in north and east Syria.
The past weeks witnessed a clear intensity of operations carried out by the IRGC-backed factions in north and east Syria, the most prominent of which is the so-called “popular resistance in the eastern region” and the National Defense Forces (NDF) that targeted the areas held by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) and the destabilization of security and stability in the region. These factions launched several attacks, most of them were in the city center of Hasakah and the town of Shaddadi under the name of “popular resistance” and they were planned by the Syrian regime.
In the same context, the statement made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on the anniversary of the killing of the Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani about the escalation of attacks against US forces came as a clear confirmation of these factions’ efforts to play a new role in the region in light of their hidden movements that are taking place in north and east Syria. According to media sources, which dealt with a leaked document from the Information Collection Department of the NDF in the city of Hasakah, it indicated that the IRGC established security services and information collection centers completely separate from the regime’s and Russia’s agencies in order to monitor the movements in this region.
These changes and moves by the IRGC in the past weeks were accompanied by a series of moves made by factions such as Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba and Liwa Fatemiyoun, which are based on the Imam Ali base located in al-Bukamal in the countryside of Deir ez-Zor and south of Aleppo. These factions were redeployed along the Euphrates River adjacent to the points of deployment of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), by forming points near the bases and points of the presence of the Fifth Corps in the Russian-backed Syrian army to protect the Russian forces present there from the strikes that the Coalition forces may launch against them, whose features have emerged during the past few days after targeting missile launchers, which were detected by the Global Coalition during a raid carried out in the al-Ashara desert in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor where the Coalition stated they pose a threat.
These moves and events came at a time when the Syrian regime’s media increased talk about the areas of north and east Syria, in particular the operations that target the patrols and fighters of the SDF and its promotion for these operations alleging that they are operations of the “popular factions” in addition to trying to evade their direct responsibility and focus on the fact that they are civil groups that reject the presence of the Global Coalition and the SDF in north and east Syria.
As a result, the Iranian goal of these military operations in northeast Syria is a recurrence of the Iraqi scenario to drive the American soldiers to the cities and then to leave according to the Iranian perspective in light of the transfer of the military activities from the countryside to the cities and targeting the civil communities. Here, we do not exclude that these factions will increase their military operations in targeting Coalition’s bases and the American patrols in the coming period.
