PHOTO: The head of Iran’s ground forces, General Ahmed Reza Pourdastan (right), at the funerals of two special forces troops killed in Syria


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Iran’s special forces have suffered their first casualties in the Syrian conflict, days after they were deployed in an escalation of Tehran’s intervention on behalf of the Assad regime.

Iranian media confirmed the deaths of Colonel Zulfighar Nesab, 2nd Lieutenants Mohsen Ghiatsalu and Mojtaba Yadollahi, and Captain Morteza Zaharand. Two Revolutionary Guards members were also slain over the weekend, according to reports.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have put in more commanders and troops since last October, when Tehran worked with Russia on multiple offensives — also including Hezbollah and Iranian-led foreign militias — to prop up President Assad and push back rebels, especially in northwest Syria. However, the despatch of the 65th Airborne Special Forces, the 45th and 258th Special Forces, and the 388th Mechanized Infantry are the first deployments of Iranian Army units in the five-year conflict.

The decision to send the brigade was a sign of the pressure on Iranian units, who are now reportedly responsible for the front south of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. Pro-regime activists have acknowledged that few Syrian military remain in the area.

On April 1, rebels and Jabhat al-Nusra launched an offensive which regained some of the territory lost last autumn to the regime-Iranian-Hezbollah attacks, enabled by Russian airstrikes. The rebel-Nusra assault has captured the town of al-Eis on the Aleppo-to-Damascus highway and is threatening Khan Touman, another town on the strategic route.

Iranian media have now confirmed the deaths of 228 commanders and troops since October 7.

For years, Iranian officials refused to acknowledge any presence in the battlefield, saying only that officers were acting as “advisors” to the Assad regime and that volunteers had died in defense of the Sayyeda Zeynab shrine in southern Damascus. However, since the start of the year, Tehran has implicitly recognized its commitment, with the Supreme Leader in photo opportunities receiving the families of “martyrs”.


US Treasury Secretary: No Iranian Access to American Financial System

US Treasury Jacob Lew has reasserted that Iran will not be granted access to the American financial system, despite any lifting of sanctions after the July 2015 nuclear deal.

Lew told the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday:

Iran has many challenges in doing business. Some have to do with Iran’s own business practices. Some have to do with Iran’s other activities outside of the nuclear arena where they continue to engage in supporting terrorism, regional destabilization and missile testing that is violating norms.

Because of the dollar’s status as reserve currency in international trade, Iran’s post-sanctions benefits will limited without at least limited access to U-turn transactions. These are transactions priced in dollars, such as most oil sales,, that must be cleared through a US financial institution even though the money does not stay in the American bank.

The Supreme Leader has put the US restriction on access at the center of his argument that the Americans cannot be trusted to fulfil the nuclear deal, jeopardizing the Rouhani Government’s claim of diplomatic success and economic recovery.

Lew insisted:

We will keep our part of the bargain, but the US financial system is not open to Iran, and that is not something that is going to change. So the challenge is going to be how to work through an international financial system that is complicated, where there is a lot of attention paid to what US law requires.


Imprisoned Iranian-Americans Namazi and Father Denied Access to Lawyer

Two imprisoned Iranian-Americans, oil executive Siamak Namazi and his 80-year-old father Mohammad Baqer Namazi are being denied access to their lawyer.

Attorney Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei is also blocked from seeing the men’s case files.

Namazi, head of strategic planning at Crescent Petroleum, was seized while visiting Iran in October. His father, a retired UNICEF official, was arrested in February by Revolutionary Guards officers as he came to Iran to see his son.

The cases have received little attention. On March 18, US Secretary of State John Kerry told AFP: “We have no information about charges against Siamak Namazi and Baquer Namazi, and we believe that they have been arrested unjustly.”

The case files can be withheld from the Namazis’ lawyer because of a new provision in the Iranian Penal Code citing
a “crime [which] relates to domestic or foreign security of the country”. However, neither man has been informed of the charges against him.


Picture: Rouhani Welcomes Italian Prime Minister

President Rouhani welcomes Italian Prime Minister on Tuesday:

ROUHANI ITALIAN PM 12-04-16

Renzi is accompanied by a delegation of 250 politicians and economists in a trip seeking trade and investment links with Tehran.

Rouhani visited Italy in his first European trip after the implementation of the nuclear deal in January, with the announcement of billions of dollars of deals. However, the President’s optimism has been checked by continuing US sanctions and regime in-fighting over both his foreign policy of “engagement” and economic planning.


Russia Deputy PM: S-300 Missile Systems to Iran By “End of Year”

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has confirmed that Russia has started the process of delivering S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran.

Rogozin told a Moscow radio station on Monday that the deal, signed in 2007 but suspended in 2010, is to be completed by the end of the year: “We are acting in strict compliance with the contract. They pay, we sell. We have already started. It is a supply in full sets.2

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said earlier in the day that the “first phase” of the delivery had been fulfilled.

Rogozin said, “I cannot say what exactly has been supplied but the supply was conducted by a logistics route elaborated by Russian and Iranian specialists.”

The despatch of the advanced systems was held up for years because of US and Israeli objections to the supply to Tehran. However, last spring Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly lifted the suspension.