A top Iranian military official says that his country has begun sending members of its army's elite special forces to Syria. Brigadier General Ali Arasteh, lieutenant commander of the Iranian Army Ground Force for Coordination revealed the deployment to Iran's Tasnim news agency on Monday. The commandos come from the Iranian Army's elite 65th Nohed Brigade and will, according to Arasteh, be stationed in Syria to support Tehran's ally in Damascus, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, in an advisory role. Unlike past Iranian deployments to Syria these forces are from Iran's regular armed forces as opposed to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) paramilitary force. This deployment also comes after at least 12 Hezbollah militiamen in Syria were killed in fighting in Aleppo on Friday along with an IRGC commander in an undisclosed part of that war-torn country on Sunday. Although Tehran has denied playing an active combat role in Syria its IRGC forces did fight alongside military forces under Assad's command in the past. Those forces peaked at 2,500 deployed soldiers who suffered at least 160 casualties doing so, including six senior military personnel including colonels and generals. They were reportedly withdrawn in February leaving only advisors in the country.
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