JERUSALEM—Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps has brought charges of mutiny against several of its senior commanders for refusing to fight in Syria, according to one of the Arab world’s leading newspapers, Asharq Al-Awsat.
Citing a source "close to the IRGC," the pan-Arab daily reported that a number of junior officers are likewise being charged with "mutiny and treason" for refusing to fight in Syria and will face court martials.
More than 400 volunteers from Iran had been killed in the Syrian civil war so far, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. Syrian President Bashir al-Assad has come to rely on Iranian officers to develop strategy, say analysts, while units of the Hezbollah militia from Lebanon have provided him needed muscle. The growing Iranian ground presence, particularly around the city of Aleppo, coincides with Russia’s air campaign in the area in support of Assad.
Additionally, Asharq Al-Awsat claimed, an official investigation has been launched in Tehran into the sudden retirement of several IRGC generals from Ahvaz Province, which is inhabited by a significant Iranian Arab population. The officers have chosen to leave military service "in this critical time" for retirement or business, the source said, rather than participate in Iran’s growing involvement in Syria’s civil war.
Iran denies having dispatched combat units to Syria but admits sending trainers and military advisers, including generals.
Rebel spokesmen in Syria claim that hundreds of Iranian troops have participated in battles against forces seeking the downfall of Assad’s regime. According to a report last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute, some 30 Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers were killed on the Syrian front in the previous two weeks.
Eight Iranian generals have been reported killed in the past two years in Syria and in Iraq where they are engaged with Iraqi militias fighting the forces of the Islamic State. A hero of Iran’s long war with Iraq in the 1980s, Gen. Farshad Hassounizadeh, was killed last month in Syria, one of three Iranian generals to be killed in battle that month. A number of colonels and other officers have also died in battle in recent weeks.
In an attack by Israeli aircraft last January on vehicles reconnoitering the Syrian border with the Israeli-held Golan Heights, an Iranian general was killed along with five other Iranian military personnel. Also killed were six members of the Hezbollah militia.
Iranian officers have also been killed leading Afghan volunteers. The volunteers were part of a large Afghan population resident in Iran. They were recruited by the IRGC for the battle against the Syrian rebels. Iranian opposition sources say that the IRGC has begun seeking recruits in more backward parts of Iran in order to bolster its ranks.