18 July 2014
The Evidence:
In a response to Al Qaeda Emir
Sheikh Ayman al
Zawahiri's latest attempt at reconciliation (see
below) with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham,
ISIS spokesman Abu
Muhammad Al Adnani made
a startling admission: Al Qaeda has ordered its
fighters and branches to refrain from attacking the
Iranian state in order to preserve the terror group's
network in the country. (Long War Journal May 2014)
ISIS was established on April 8, 2013,
when its subsidiary organization, Jabhat Al Nusra,
merged with the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), which
itself was a successor to what suppose to be Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The organization's leader is Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi, who recently announced the Islamic
Caliphate. The
group announced on 30th June
that it was now called the "Islamic
State". An official document was also released,
in English and several other languages.
According to the statement, the new
caliphate stretches from Iraq's Diyala province to
Syria's Aleppo. "The words "Iraq" and
" Levant" have
been removed from the name of the Islamic State in
official papers and documents."
Many believe that this an Iranian
inspired step to frighten the West that Bashar Al
Assad regime is the only bulwark against the new
Islamic bugaboo. ISIS clashed
with its former Al-Qaeda sister branch,
already active in Syria, Jabhat
Al-Nusra or Al-Nusra
Front headed
by Abu
Mohammad Al Golani.
The clash between ISIS and
Al-Nusra sparked
accusations that the former (i.e ISIS) was nothing but a means
for the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate,
along with the Iranians, to plant agents of the Assad
regime and of Iran within the Syrian opposition,
thereby spreading confusion in its ranks and diverting
it from the fight against Assad into internecine
struggle, according to a report published by the Jerusalem
Centre for Public Affairs in
June 2014.
During the invasion of Iraq, Syria
would send ISIS
purportedly affiliated to Al-Qaeda operatives
to Iraq to attack US forces. Syrian intelligence in
full coordination with Iran recruited the ISIS to infiltrate the ranks of the
Al-Qaeda
Salafis now
fighting in Syria. Once free, they broke into Iraqi
prisons to liberate their comrades, thereby creating
the basis for expanding ISIS.
Iran's Motivation and
Collusion:
What would Iran's motivation be to
support a Sunni jihadist organizations like ISIS?
In Syria, ISIS has
forced the West to choose between the regime of Bashar
al-Assad or
a religious outfit. Given that choice, it was assumed
that the West would back Assad, as did the Russians
and the Chinese.
Cynically Iran is exploiting the
Western fear of terrorism to make common cause with
the West against
ISIS.
ISIS suddenly
emerged in Syria, at a time when the collapse of
Assad's regime seemed imminent. The emergence of ISIS saved
the Syrian regime by threatening the world with an
alternative fighters regime would replace Assad's.
The same scenario happened in Iraq. Nouri
al-Maliki, who is an Iranian puppet as most
Iraqis believe, was about to lose his position as
Prime Minister, especially that Sunni, Shi'ite and
Kurds leaders unanimously refused to renew his term.
Suddenly again, ISIS emerged.
The ISIS connection
with the Syrian leadership, and hence with Iran,
raises serious questions. It was recently noted that
President Assad released ISIS operatives
from his prisons and for the most part left it alone,
sparing it from attacks by the Syrian army. Two
leading American analysts just wrote in the Washington
Post, "The non-jihadist Syrian opposition insists
that ISIS is a creation of Iran."
David Butter,
a leading expert on Syria and an associate fellow at
think-tank Chatham House, told Channel 4 News recently
that the links between ISIS and
Syrian intelligence date back to the aftermath of
the Iraq war of 2003.
"The leaders of ISIS have
already worked hand in glove with Syrian intelligence,
whether supplying them with weapons or supplying money
flowing from their racketeering activities around
Mosul. "Assad has a long history of supporting
terrorist groups and activity in the region. There
have been pictures of ISIS flags
on buildings that have escaped shelling and reports of
supposed collusion on oil and gas deals".
When ISIS was
formed in April last year, Syrian activists claimed it
served the interests of President Bashar Al-Assad and
his main ally, Tehran. A report in the Economist
magazine 21st June
14 explained how ISIS was
less interested in toppling the Assad's regime than
fighting other groups. ISIS has
been criticized for its attacks on civilians and rival
opposition groups. It has never targeted Al Assad's
regime and not a single barrel bombs has been dropped
by the regime on ISIS.
The Iranian ISIS/ISIL
connections:
According to Al-Shorfa.com a
web site sponsored by USCENTCOM "The Iranian regime's
continued interference in Syrian affairs is rooted in
preserving its economic and political interests in the
region "Iran's current goal is to abort the Syrian
revolution and portray the ruling Syrian regime as
waging a war on terrorism". The connection between the
Iranian regime and ISIL is
evident.
"Since the outbreak of the Islamic
Revolution, Iran has worked to establish external
bases through some of the armed groups that follow its
policy directly, such as Hezbollah's
branches in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria".
"The first organisation born of the
womb of the Iranian intelligence [services] was the
Islamic State in Iraq (ISI),
which later became ISIL/ISIS under
the leadership of Abu
Bakr Al-Baghdadi,"
These contradictions raise questions
about how far Iran is willing to go in using ISIS and
its leadership groups to implement its
policies.
The Iranian regime's support of groups
such as ISIL aims
to "project a dark image of the Syrian opposition as
nothing but Al-Qaeda-affiliated
religious groups," said Sami Gheit, an economist and
researcher with Al-Sharq
Centre for Regional and Strategic Studies.
Many of ISIL‘s
practices, including field executions, assassinations
and beheadings, aim to tarnish the image of the Syrian
revolution, said Mohammed
Abdullah, a Syrian journalist residing in Cairo
who is documenting the Syrian war, with a focus on the
Iranian file. FIGHTING the Free Syrian Army INSTEAD OF
SYRIA'S REGIME, ISIS has
never engaged the Syrian army or Hezbollah. "In al-Raqa,
for example,ISIL spared
strategic Syrian regular army positions, despite the
fact it controls the bulk of the territory in the
province." The three positions are the airport and
[the headquarters of] the 17th Division and 93rd
Brigade.
Iranian Documents Found
In ISIL's Possession:
Other evidence of the Iranian regime's
involvement with ISIL includes
the discovery of official documents and passports
issued by the Iranian authorities at ISIL‘s
headquarters in rural western Aleppo earlier this
year, said Syrian journalist Mohammed
Abdullah.
These documents include Iranian
passports and several other documents belonging to
fighters from Chechnya and Kazakhstan, in addition to
many Iranian SIM cards, he said.
This points to a connection between ISIL leaders
and Iranian intelligence, he said. The brain-washed
rank and file of ISIS are ignorant of the political
alliances between ISIS,
Tehran and Damascus.
Iran is Syrian President Bashar Assad's
strongest ally, providing military, financial and
diplomatic, and propaganda support. The U.S. has
repeatedly accused Iran of using its Revolutionary
Guards to train and deploy Shi'ite fighters to bolster
Assad's forces.
In June the Islamic State of Iraq and
Al-Sham (ISIS) humiliated
the Iraqi army and focused world attention on Iraq
again. What the world does not recognize is the role
played by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad helping and
strengthening ISIS.
ISIS has
long been at war with the moderate opposition groups
like the Islamic
Front and
the Free
Syrian Army (FSA), who have successfully driven
it out of much of its former turf in the north. Alex
Rowell writing on 17th June
in Now
Media Me ""Blame
Assad for ISIS Rise"". He gives examples of the
collaboration between ISIS and
the Syrian regime.
-ISIS bases
have never been targeted by the Syrian regime
A government adviser told the New York
Times' Anne Barnard this was indeed a deliberate
policy, designed to "tar" the broader opposition and
"frame [the] choice" as either Assad or the religious
groups.
-As one ISIS defector
told The Daily Telegraph, "We were confident that the
regime would not bomb us. We always slept soundly in
our bases.
-According to the same Daily Telegraph
report, both ISIS and
Jabhat al-Nusra have raised millions of dollars
through sales of crude oil from fields under their
control to the regime.
- Nawaf al-Fares, the defected former
Syrian ambassador to Iraq, has claimed the regime
ordered a series of suicide bombings in Syria in 2012,
carried out by the very jihadists he himself had sent
to Iraq years previously.
Yet more recently the siege of Deir
ez-Zor has been maintained by the army of Bashar al-Assad
in the south and by ISIS to
the north and east. Among the forces that have been
trapped in the middle are the Free
Syrian Army (FSA), raising the question of
whether ISIS was
colluding with the Syrian government and its Iranian
allies to defeat the more mainstream elements of the
Syrian opposition. Also at the time of writing we read
reports of collusion between ISIS and
Assad's army in Aleppo.
As the conflict in Syria and Iraq
continues, more facts about the collaboration between Iran, ISIS and
the Syrian regime will emerge. Comments 💬 التعليقات |