Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has placed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on alert to be prepared to initiate large-scale assaults against the Syrian opposition and the Free Syrian Army at the first opportunity.
Among IRGC military plans is the capture of a major road between Nubl and Aleppo. Marea, north of Nubl, has turned into a garrison controlled by the IRGC and its Afghan mercenaries. They are now making preparations for the next major assault.
Simultaneously, additional IRGC forces are getting ready to be transported to Syria, including forces from Nabi Akram Division in Kermanshah commanded by Colonel Akbar Nazari. They are receiving training at Kermanshah’s Azadi Stadium so that after the Iranian New Year at least two battalions from this division can be dispatched to Syria. The IRGC has set up training minefields in the halls of this stadium.
The IRGC continues to dispatch mercenaries from larger Iranian cities to Syria. From the southern Iranian city of Abadan alone, there are three daily flights taking mercenaries to Damascus. On Saturday, March 5 around 300 fighters with al-Nojaba, an Iraqi mercenary group affiliated with the Qods Force, were flown from Abadan to Damascus.
Meanwhile, on February 22, Khamenei ordered the establishment of airborne units of the IRGC Army to intensify their assaults in Syria. Helicopters from the IRGC aerospace division are in the process of being transferred to the IRGC Army for this purpose.
Khamenei is using the unfrozen funds from the nuclear deal to purchase billions of dollars of advanced weaponry from Russia for the IRGC and Bashar Assad’s military. A large number of helicopters, jet fighters and T-90 tanks are on this purchase list. Following the nuclear deal, the Iranian regime has promised to bankroll a considerable portion of Assad’s acquisition of essential weaponry from Russia.
