Mona Alami

Just a few weeks after an Israeli airstrike killed several Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp members near Qunaitra in southern Syria, pro-regime forces, spearheaded by Hezbollah and the IRCG, launched a massive strike in the area of Deraa, which is largely under rebel and Nusra Front control.

In the past few weeks a series of security incidents have taken place in the south. These are looking increasingly like building blocks in a carefully laid plan. On Jan. 18, a senior general in the IRCG’s Quds Force, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with six Hezbollah operatives, including Jihad Mughniyeh and field commander Mohammad Issa while conducting a reconnaissance operation. Ten days later, Hezbollah responded with an attack that killed two Israeli soldiers in the disputed area of Ghajar, near the Syrian, Lebanese and Israeli borders.

After the Israeli attack Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, in a speech honoring the dead Hezbollah fighters, declared that the rules of engagement with Israel had ended. He thus confirmed the evolution of Iran’s military game plan in Syria. Iran has used the upheaval in the country to extend its reach further west, using its proxy Hezbollah, with its long experience in fighting Israel, to acquire another direct vantage point on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, Iran, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias have been active in Syria. Hezbollah has spearheaded military operations in various places such as Qalamoun, Qusair and Damascus. Last October, the researcher Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi pointed to the emergence of “native brands, which, if not actually set up by Hezbollah, are nonetheless identical in ideology and messaging” such as “the National Ideological Resistance in Syria.” The author remarked that the organization’s public image showed “clear affinity with Hezbollah and other Iranian proxy militias.”

Last November, a French commentator and former official who uses the pseudonym Ignace Leverrier talked about the “Iranization” of certain Syrian areas, namely Damascus. He underlined that Iran had taken advantage of Syria’s economic difficulties, investing billions of dollars in fields ranging from energy production to manufacturing, including automobile assembly plants and refineries for petroleum products. 

More interestingly, Leverrier noted the “unprecedented intrusion of the Iranian regime in the military and security sectors and ... the activism of some mullahs spreading Shiism. He compared the role in Syria of the Quds Force commander, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, to that previously played by Syrian Generals Ghazi Kanaan and Rustom Ghazaleh in Lebanon – effective high commissioners put in place by their government.

The offensive launched by pro-regime forces in Deraa is the first of its kind since the rebels’ takeover a few weeks ago of Liwa 82, one of the regime’s largest military bases, and the nearby town of Sheikh Miskeen, after months of fighting. Yet defending regime interests, especially the security of Damascus, is not the only motivation behind the current offensive. The aim is to secure southern Syria, which is essential for the control of Qunaitra, a front line across from the occupied Golan Heights, which is of utmost importance to both Iran and Hezbollah.

The Iranians and Hezbollah have reportedly been beefing up their presence there. The Daily Star recently quoted a Syrian military source confirming that Hezbollah was engaged in the fighting in Qunaitra and Deraa. A Syrian opposition site, Syria Mubasher, added that military operations were being led by the IRGC, Hezbollah and Afghani Shiite forces, and that the Syrian army had little presence in the area. 

In addition, the Al-Arabiya news site reported the death of two high-ranking Iranian officers, Ali Sultan Maradi and Abbas Abdullah, who were killed in the fighting last weekend.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, reports of the Iranians’ command of military operations follow recent signs of increasing IRGC and Hezbollah activity in the area, as well as IRGC-linked sleeper cells. In such a context, Hezbollah and Iran are committed to setting up a base in southern Syria, with the dual aim of beating back the Syrian rebels and extending the Iranian battlefront against Israel from Lebanon to Syria.

That is why the southern campaign should be interpreted within the framework of the Jan. 18 Israeli airstrike. The attack was a clear indication that Israel would not allow the Golan border region to fall into the hands of the “resistance axis,” even if this means aiding Syrian opposition groups, as was stated in a recent report by the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force on the Golan, which detected contact between rebels and the Israeli armed forces.

The Deraa offensive led by Iran and Hezbollah indicates that the positioning of Iranian forces and its proxies in closer proximity to the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights remains a priority for Iranian strategists. In that way Tehran hopes to retain leverage in the Arab-Israeli conflict.