LATEST: Did President Rouhani Just Adopt A Hard Line on Syria?

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FEATURED PHOTO: Esmail Heydari, killed last month in Syria — documentary maker, Revolutionary Guards officer, or both?

SUMMARY: We begin with the ongoing examination of raw video indicating that officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been training a militia fighting for the Syrian regime.

On Thursday, we posted an extensive analysis of the footage, taken from an Iranian camera crew after insurgents of the Liwa Dawud attacked a military facility in southern Aleppo Province.

Meanwhile, the BBC and a leading Netherlands news program re-presented Al Jazeerea’s original assertion — exaggerated from distortion of the video clips, in our analysis — of Al Jazeera that Iranians are commanding Syrian forces on the battlefield, with Iranian fighters alongside them.

The differing analyses, as well as exchanges on social media, did raise specific issues that are still clear.

1. Was Esmail Heydari, killed by the insurgents who later took his camera, making a documentary about the Iranian role in the Syrian conflict? Or was he, with past connections to the Revolutionary Guards, the subject of the film? Did he still have an operational role in the military?

2. Were the Iranian officers — at least four of whom are seen in the footage — training the pro-regime militia Liwa Abu Fadl al-Abbas, made up primarily of Shia fighters? Or were they also supervising a reconnaissance mission when the militia was ambushed and Heydari — and possibly another Iranian cameraman — were killed?

We continue to work on those questions. However, the main conclusions stand:

1. Officers of Iran’s Revoluitionary Guards — at least on this evidence — are not commanding Syrian forces on major operations in the battlefield. Iranian troops are not on the front line.

However, as Guards commander Mohammad Ali Jafari said publicly in September 2012, his officers are training Syrian militias.

What is distinctive now is that they have been captured on film doing so — and are carrying out the role not just in Damascus but closer to the battle fronts in northern Syria.

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Did President Rouhani Just Adopt A Hard Line on Syria?

If true, these words — as reported by State outlet Press TV — are a marked shift by President Rouhani from “moderation” to hard-line rhetoric on the Syrian insurgency:

“We…believe that arming the extremist and Takfiri groups, and specially the access by these groups to chemical weapons, is the biggest threat to peace and security in the region,” Rouhani supposedly said in his speech at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek on Friday.

In contrast to other Iranian officials, Rouhani has carefully avoided blaming the insurgents for the August 21 chemical weapons attacks, and he has refrained from using the derogatory label “Takfiris” (Muslim heretics).

Press TV also reports Rouhani saying, “All efforts to reach a political solution must condemn and reject any threat and resort to force,” as he supported the Russian proposal for the Assad regime to give up chemical weapons stocks in return for suspension of the threat of US airstrikes.

Rouhani: Right to Peaceful Nuclear Tech, Sanctions Illegal

President Rouhani has criticised the US-led sanctions against Iran, reiterating Iran’s right to nuclear technology while stressing an agreement between Tehran and Western countries can be reached.

In a speech at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyz, Rouhani said, “The majority of UN member states, including the 120 Non-Aligned movement (NAM) members, have dismissed the sanctions against Iran as illegitimate, illegal and politically motivated.”

“These sanctions are an uncivilized move and a dangerous precedent [and are] aimed at disrupting the trend of Iran’s development [and have] mercilessly targeted the ordinary and innocent [Iranian] citizens,” he added.

The president argued that disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation are necessary for international peace and stability, citing Tehran’s commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) based on its “legal commitments, religious and moral tenets and strategic considerations.”

He called for political will, mutual respect, and confidence-building measures to resolve the West’s nuclear dispute with Iran, adding that peaceful nuclear technology is the “inalienable right of all NPT member states.”

Rouhani Expresses “Pride” in Iranian Female Triathelte

President Hassan Rouhani – or at least somebody in his office – has been busy on Twitter today, expressing his “#pride” in Shirin Gerami, the first Iranian female athlete to compete in a triathlon.

Rouhani also ‘retweeted’ a link to an article by the Guardian newspaper about Gerami.

EA’s Joanna Paraszczuk has previously written about Rouhani’s use of social media to promote his policies on gender equality and women’s rights.

President Rouhani Tweets Support For Syria’s Decision to Join Chemical Weapons Prohibition

President Rouhani’s office has taken to Twitter to reiterate his conviction that Syria needs a diplomatic solution — not military intervention — and support for Bashar al-Assad’s decision to join the “international convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons.”

Rouhani Dealing With Ahmadinejad’s Economic Legacy

President Rouhani is having to deal with the economic legacy of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Arron Merat writes for Iran Pulse.

Ahmadinejad’s policy of providing free government land and cheap credit to Maskan-e Mehr housing developers since 2007 caused the recent 40% spike in inflation, according to Abbas Ahmad Akhoundi, Iran’s new housing minister.

The former president has also been accused of using the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) to acquire 500 trillion rials (worth $40 billion at the time) to “plug holes in the project’s budget, flooding the real economy with oil cash and sending liquidity and inflation soaring.”

Merat quotes Akhoundi’s doubts about the housing project: “Did [Maskan-e Mehr] satisfy the people? Did it have a positive effect on controlling prices? Was it able to create jobs in the wider economy? Was it possible for the project to proceed with the least effect on inflation? In reality, decreasing inflation will mean slowing down this scheme.”

He continues:

Valiollah Seif, the new CBI governor, has said that the base interest rate of 15% should be above inflation, but that it will remain unchanged in the short term to protect domestic producers and avoid choking off a recovery from Iran’s entrenched recession.

On Sept. 10, in his first televised address, Rouhani told the nation that the economy was experiencing “stagflation,” citing the Statistical Centre of Iran’s figure of -5.4% growth and 44% year-on-year inflation.

“When the country’s [economy] is in ‘stagflation,’ the job is very tough because if there were only stagnation, we could adopt an expansion policy to fight it, while if the situation were inflation, we could control it with contraction strategies,” he explained. “But when both of them are issues, the work becomes very difficult.”

All is Well – Basij Plan to Feed “200 Million”

Mohammad Reza Naghdi, head of the Basij Organization, has declared that the organization has a “big plan” to produce dairy and poultry products to resolve food shortages.

He claimed that Iran has the capacity to feed “more than 200 million people” — which should be good news to its population of 77 million.

Karzai Invites Rouhani to Afghanistan

President Rouhani has been invited to visit Afghanistan by President Hamid Karzai.

Meanwhile, Rouhani expressed Iran’s commitment to Afghan security and stability, commenting that he considers “the presence of foreign forces in the region, especially Afghanistan, to be fostering extremism.”

Saeed Jalili Joins Expediency Council

Yesterday, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed former presidential candidate and head of Iran’s supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili to the Expediency Discernment Council.

Jalili joins former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as one of the latest members of the Council, which is chaired by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Russian President: Iran Has “Fight” To Peaceful Atomic Energy

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Iran has a “right” to peaceful atomic energy.

Speaking at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Council in Bishkek, Putin said, “We believe that Iran, like any other state, has the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, including enrichment.”