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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/world/middleeast/russia-iran-base-syria.html?
Iran Helps Russia Add Firepower in Syrian War
(New York Times) Neil MacFarquhar and David E. Sanger - Russia launched an air attack in Syria on Tuesday from an Iranian air base, becoming the first foreign military to operate from Iranian soil since at least World War II. "The irony is that the [Iranian] revolutionaries denounced the shah as a foreign puppet," said John Limbert, a former American foreign service officer who was taken hostage in 1979 at the embassy in Tehran and is now a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. "But these guys have done something that the shah never did." The arrangement enables Russia to bring more firepower to the Syrian conflict. Instead of flying heavy bombers from Russia, the trip will now be 1,000 miles shorter and the planes will be able to carry heavier payloads.