Sobhe Tous website reported on the burial of Ahmad Arefi and Jafar Hosseini on Wednesday morning, April 30, in the city of Mashhad.
Hafez News reported that the body of Javad Sajjadi shot in the side was buried in Shiraz on Tuesday.
Local websites in Eastern Azarbaijan Province reported that Moharam Alipour, an IRGC member that had been killed in the Syrian conflict, was buried on Tuesday.
All these websites stated that those killed were “Defenders of Zaynab Shrine” (a sacred Shiite shrine in Damascus suburbs), a pretext used by the Iranian regime to justify the dispatch of its forces to Syria.
On January 24, 2014during the Davos Conference, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif denied any type of presence of Iranian forces on the Syrian territory. He called for all foreign forces to leave Syria.
The Iranian Student Newsletter previously reported that one of the regime’s forces was killed on January 22 in Syria and another one was also killed on December 18, 2013.
In August 2012, the Free Syrian Army forces took 48 Iranians prisoner in Damascus. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) indicated that these prisoners were IRGC commanders and officers who had gone to Syria to help Bashar al-Assad. Somewhat later, NCRI revealed that Tehran also dispatches its subordinate Shia Iraqi forces to fight alongside Assad’s forces.
The January 30 reports of 15 Iranians killed in Syria is the latest of many examples of the IRGC’s involvement in Syria despite assurances there are no Iranian forces in Syria. The regime and reality continue to operate on separate planes of existence.
