Iran's Deadly Ambition. Ilan Berman
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So pervasive did Iran’s meddling become that, in March 2014, President Hadi took the unprecedented step of publicly pinning the blame on Tehran for Yemen’s ongoing instability. “Unfortunately, Iranian interference still exists,” Hadi told the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat. “We asked our Iranian brothers to revise their wrong policies towards Yemen, but our demands have not borne fruit. We have no desire to escalate [the situation] with Tehran but at the same time we hope it will lift its hand off Yemen.”36
This assistance hardened the political posture of the Houthis, who rebuffed repeated efforts on the part of the Hadi government to reach a political compromise. It also helped tip the scales decisively in the Houthis’ favor. The Houthis went on the offensive, seeking to secure key strong-holds in Yemen’s west, including the strategic port of Midi, close to the country’s shared border with Saudi Arabia. Their actions naturally set off alarm bells in Riyadh, with observers describing the Houthi advance as a “grave threat.”37 It culminated in the fall 2014 Houthi takeover of portions of the Yemeni capital, San
Tehran, meanwhile, is exploiting other fissures in the Yemeni state as well. As one government official told London’s Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in July 2012, “Tehran is providing financial and logistical support to the secessionist movement, whilst it is also working to train some armed movements in southern Yemen, in addition to establishing a network of relations with Yemeni parliamentarians, political activists, journalists and writers. Iran is also funding media operations and political parties with the objective of thwarting the transition of power in Yemen.”40
Iran, in other words, is working hard to penetrate, fragment, and destabilize Yemen, using time-tested methodology perfected on other foreign-policy fronts. As it has done elsewhere in the region, Iran is trying to empower the Shia minority in order to challenge Yemen’s established Sunnidominated status quo. And, by all accounts, Iran has succeeded in doing just that.
A PROXY WAR IN SYRIA
In March 2011, the Arab Spring came to Syria. Prompted by antiestablishment protests in Tunisia and Egypt, opposition activists in the southern city of Deraa began their own low-level civic activism, ranging from street gatherings to spray-painting graffiti. Government forces responded with a spate of detentions, which in turn generated massive street protests and an even wider governmental crackdown. Over the course of some six weeks, dozens of activists were killed by government forces. The deepening repression, however, didn’t quell the protests. Rather, it galvanized still greater opposition, which led to the emergence of a constellation of rebel forces and the country’s descent into an outright civil war that persists to this day.
Over time, Assad’s war became Iran’s, too. Syria has long ranked as Iran’s most reliable regional partner, and the two countries (with their joint proxy Hezbollah) make up the “axis of resistance” aimed at fighting the United States and Israel.
Not surprisingly, Syria’s chaos attracted Iran. Since the start of the fighting, the Iranian regime has become a vital—if undeclared—player in the bloody conflict taking place between the Assad regime and its assorted opponents, both domestic and foreign.
Publicly, Iran has sought to portray a constructive political image through its Syria policy. The Iranian regime, for example, has made a very public show of sending large quantities of humanitarian aid to help alleviate the crisis in Syria, and has been doing so despite significant domestic criticism.41 In September 2013, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif even went so far as to offer the Islamic Republic’s help in ridding Syria of chemical weapons.42 Behind the scenes, however, Iran has pursued a decidedly more assertive—and destructive—role.
Most visibly, Iran’s aid has come in the form of foreign fighters. The Iranian regime is thought to have deployed a large contingent of IRGC forces to the Syrian battlefield. Their number includes hundreds of trained snipers, who have reinforced Syrian troops and increased their deadliness against Syria’s opposition.43
Iran, together with its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, has also played a key role by organizing pro-Assad militias among Syria’s Alawite and Shia communities, as well as by organizing foreign fighters from Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. Iranian officials boast that these “popular committees” now total upward of 50,000 fighters who benefit from training provided in both Iran and Lebanon.44
Iran, moreover, is actively seeking to expand its involvement. A May 2014 expose in the Wall Street Journal stated that the IRGC has been actively recruiting thousands of refugees from Afghanistan to join the fight in Syria. In exchange, these “volunteers” are offered a monthly salary of $500 and stabilization of their traditionally tenuous residency status in the Islamic Republic.45
Iran is assisting the Assad regime by other means, too. The Iranian regime has been complicit in providing significant amounts of arms and war materiel to the Syrian government.46 This transfer includes sophisticated battlefield hardware. Over the past three years, the Islamic Republic has translated its rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology into an export commodity, supplying Syrian regime forces with several variants of its indigenously developed UAVs, including the Pahpad AB-3, the Yasir, and the Shahed 129—equipment that has been used by Assad against his domestic opposition.47
Iran’s aid to Syria has also taken on an economic dimension. Iran, still under economic pressure from the West, takes part in “sanctions-busting” by providing the Assad regime with monthly lines of credit worth some $500 million with which to purchase crude oil and other products that the United States and Europe have sought to limit.48 Iran has played a more active role here as well, supplying crude oil to the Syrian regime in Iranian-flagged tankers in spite of Western restrictions, thereby providing Damascus with much-needed economic relief.49
Over time, Iran’s assistance has helped reshape the contours of the Syrian conflict. Whereas, at the outset, conventional wisdom held that the Assad regime could only cling to power for a short period of time, the contemporary view in both the Middle East and the West is that the Syrian regime has successfully weathered the storm.
The Iranian regime credits itself with this state of affairs. “Thanks to the planning and wisdom of Iran’s leaders, Syria’s regime could enjoy some stability,” a senior commander of the IRGC was cited by the Agence France Presse as saying in the spring of 2014.50
For Iran, this represents far more than simply a local victory. Rather, it is perceived to be a direct blow against the nation it calls the Great Satan, the United States. “Since Syria was and continues to be part of the Islamic resistance front and the Islamic Revolution, it provokes the anger of the Americans,” IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari explained on Iranian television.51 Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, put it more succinctly in May 2014. “We have won in Syria,” he told reporters. “The regime will stay. The Americans have lost it.”52
This effort has come at a high cost for Tehran, however. Perhaps more than any other issue, the Iranian regime’s support for Assad has put it on the wrong side of the prevailing politics of the Arab Spring. As a result, the Islamic Republic has experienced a massive loss of support in the region and a sharpening of tensions with the Sunni Arab states.