(NOW Lebanon) A top Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer boasted to Al-Arabiya on Tuesday about Tehran's role in Syria and revealed that his country has been indoctrinating youth there to fight under the IRGC. "The IRGC has begun to establish new religious groups in Syria called 'Kashab' among young Alawites, Sunnis, Christians and Ismailis" to carry out "ideological education" for the "recruitment of teenagers in Syria to fight in militias under [the command] of the IRGC." He boasted that Iran had formed 42 brigades and 138 battalions to fight for the Assad regime. He added that the "establishment of the Basij [paramilitary militia] in Syria was one of Iran's most important achievements in recent years." Earlier in the week, Ali Younesi, one of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's advisors, said that no power had the right to oppose Iran in the region. "All of the Middle East is Iranian," the Kurdish Iraqi Rudaw news agency quoted him as saying.
2015-03-13 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive