Cartoon by Nawar Khalil

Iran Pulls Most Forces From Syria, in Blow to Tehran’s Regional Ambitions

By Lara Seligman, Jared Malsin, Benoit Faucon and Summer Said

The Wall Street Journal: Iranian forces have largely withdrawn from Syria following the Assad regime’s December collapse, according to U.S., European and Arab officials, in a significant blow to Tehran’s strategy for projecting power in the Middle East.

The Iranian withdrawal marks the demise of a yearslong effort in which Tehran used Syria as a hub in its broader regional strategy of partnering with regimes and allied militias to spread influence and wage proxy war against the U.S. and Israel. Iranian-backed armed groups in Syria have launched attacks on U.S. forces and aided in attacks on Israel. Members of Iran’s elite Quds Force have now fled to Iran and the militia groups have disbanded, a senior U.S. official said.

The Islamic Republic spent billions of dollars and sent thousands of military personnel and allied fighters to Syria after the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria was Iran’s main state ally in the Middle East and a critical land bridge to Hezbollah—the most powerful militia in Tehran’s self-labeled “axis of resistance” alliance.

Iran, already reeling from Israeli airstrikes on its assets and partners in the region, began withdrawing personnel during the dramatic 11-day collapse of the Assad regime’s military late last year. When rebels in Syria launched an offensive in November, Iran’s government was already frustrated with Assad, who had remained on the sidelines over the prior year during Tehran’s multifront conflict with Israel.

Iran’s network in Syria once spanned the length of the country, from the east where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helped transport weapons and fighters into the country, to Syria’s border with Lebanon, where it helped arm Hezbollah with weapons shipments.

As the Assad regime collapsed, thousands of Iran-backed militia fighters were still in the country, mainly in eastern Syria, with some scattered in Damascus, Aleppo and elsewhere. Most of those in eastern Syria, including IRGC officers, along with Afghan, Iraqi, Lebanese and Syrian fighters, fled to al-Qaim, a border town on the Iraqi side, said Western and Arab officials. Some of the Iranians based in Damascus flew to Tehran, while Hezbollah fighters in the west of the country fled by road to Lebanon, they said.

Iraq’s embassy in Washington and its foreign ministry didn’t return a request for comment. The Iranian mission at the United Nations in New York declined to comment on the departure of forces from Syria.

Asked if the Iranians were completely out of Syria, the State Department’s top Middle East official, Barbara Leaf, said Monday, “Pretty much, yes…It’s extraordinary.” >>>