May 13, 2015

For the past four years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been involved thoroughly in the developments taking place in Syria. The Iranian role reached its peak with the decision to defend the Syrian regime with all possible means, defining the war taking place in Syria as a battle between the resistance bloc and its enemies. Iran’s close allies around the region — with the help of Iranian experts and officers — deployed to Syria, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah becoming the main group fighting on Syrian soil beside the Syrian army and helping on several occasions to retake areas that had been taken by rebel groups. This happened in Qusair and Yabrud on the Lebanese Syrian borders, Homs, areas in Aleppo where some Shiite communities live and the outskirts of Damascus, where the holy shrine of Zeinab, the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad, is situated.

“The resistance bloc is in Syria to help the legitimate Syrian government in its battle against terrorists and at the same time to maintain its interests there,” an Iranian military source told Al-Monitor. “Hezbollah’s role in Syria was part of its resistance role on the borders with Palestine, yet this is going to change.” The Iranian military source said that as a result of change on the battlefield and developments in the region, “The resistance bloc as a whole is going to assume responsibility wherever there’s a need for help across Syria — it doesn’t matter if it’s Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, Aleppo, Idlib — even the number of fighters on the ground will witness a surge. There are thousands of volunteers waiting to join this holy war.”

In a speech May 5, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said that his group’s men had begun fighting in new areas. “Lately, we went to places we weren't in during the past years,” he said. “We were where we needed to be, and we will be where we must be; we believe that this is not [just] the battle of the Syrian people, it is defending ourselves: Syria, Lebanon and the entire region.”

In the meantime, Hezbollah’s forces have been fighting at Qalamoun, along the Syrian-Lebanese border, although the clashes taking place in that area have not been officially called a battle to retake the area. Also, it has been confirmed that Hezbollah forces are accompanying the Syrian army in preparations to retake the cities of Idlib and Jisr al-Shughur, while staying on full alert for any developments that might occur in Aleppo, Hama or Latakia.

In Qalamoun, Hezbollah forces alongside the Syrian army are combating Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, which controls a 50-kilometer (31-mile) corridor inside the Lebanese border and around 600 kilometers (373 miles) inside the Syrian border. Jabhat al-Nusra is said to have between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters in the area, which is seen as a strategic zone with its interconnections with Damascus, Homs and southern Syria, mainly the Golan Heights. On May 13, the Shiite group succeeded in taking control of Moussa’s Hill, a strategic post overseeing the border between Lebanon and Syria. Footage aired on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV showed the group’s fighters for the first time raising their yellow flag and mounting it, another indication Hezbollah changed its visual and news tactics of crediting the Syrian army only for all the battles they fought in the past two years.