Middle East Monitor, September 8, 2016 – An Iraqi Shia militia fighting in Syria announced that its forces were being inspected on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo by Iranian Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) elite Quds Force.
Soleimani, identified by the US government as being a key Iranian figure involved in international terrorism, has been an ubiquitous figure across Syrian and Iraqi battlefields, and is responsible for the IRGC’s international operations.
Harakat Al-Nujaba (HHN), a Shia militant group that is openly loyal to Iran, made the announcement days after its leader Akram Al-Kaabi visited Iran in order to meet with senior political, military and religious Iranian figures.
According to Al Jazeera, Al-Kaabi’s visit to Iran was for the purposes of further coordinating efforts between Iran and its proxies in order to tackle regional Iranian strategic objectives, specifically in Syria and Iraq.
In a related development, Reuters reported that HHN had deployed 1,000 additional fighters over the past couple of days to Syria.
This was confirmed by the militia’s official spokesman, Hashim Al-Mousawi, who declared that “more than 1,000” fighters had been sent to garrison areas in southern Aleppo that had recently been recaptured from Syrian opposition groups.
This brings HHN’s total force deployment in Syria to approximately 8,000 militants.
HHN has been fighting in Syria on the side of President Bashar Al-Assad since at least 2013, and has openly declared that it would overthrow the Iraqi government if Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ever ordered it.
