from Foreign Policy March 25, 2015 by Sara Elizabeth Williams
NOTE: A truly scary analysis. Read this is if you want to understand the Middle East Today.
As the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah try to drive back rebel fighters in southern Syria, they threaten to spur a larger conflict in one of the Middle East's most volatile regions.
MAN — In Jordan, Syria’s war is everywhere. Over 600,000 refugees have fled to the country: Cities like Irbid and Zarqa teem with new Syrian inhabitants, and Zaatari camp, which houses 85,000 exiled Syrian Sunnis, is home to at least four donkeys named Bashar. Above it all, coalition cargo planes and screaming F-16s slice through the spring sky toward northern Syria and Iraq, daily reminders of Jordan’s role in the coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State.
But the most potent force in the battle unfolding just across Jordan’s northern border is still invisible: Iranian power.
Over the past six weeks, soldiers belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah have played a major role in the Syrian regime’s long-awaited offensive on the southern province of Daraa.
The southern province is the moderate opposition’s last stronghold, and the site of steady rebel gains since early summer 2014. With no Islamic State presence to contend with, Free Syrian Army-affiliated groups and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front have found ways to work together, tightening their hold on the region. Their reach covers most of the Jordan-Syria border, providing them with valuable supply lines leading to Amman. On March 25, reportedly supported by an influx of arms from their international backers, a coalition of rebel groups were able to seize the Daraa town of Bosra al-Sham from the Syrian regime and its allies.
Yet while the opposition fighters vying for control in this part of the country are mostly locals, their adversaries are not. Sunni rebels, activists, and researchers say the well-trained Iranian-backed Shiite fighters on the ground are more numerous and more powerful than the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces (NDF), a government-funded paramilitary force they are fighting alongside.
If anything, the Iranian militias seem to be leading the fight, said Issam el-Rayyes, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front.
“We are costing them a lot of losses, but they don’t stop. It’s clear this isn’t the [Syrian army],” he said. “They are fighting for beliefs.”
According to Rayyes, the U.S.-backed Southern Front has about 2,500 men in the battle, compared to the regime’s 5,000. He estimates that just one of every five of the men on the opposite side are Syrian — a number with which several independent experts agreed. The other 4,000 are Iranian-backed Shiite fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
Phillip Smyth, a researcher of Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, said that Iran and its allies have attracted foreign fighters by painting the fight as a battle to the death with Sunni extremists, in which Shiites are obliged to defend the Sayyida Zainab Mosque in Damascus, one of the holiest shrines for Shiites.
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