Iran Focus
London, 7 Jun – Iran poses a great threat in the Middle East; indeed with its financial and ideological support for terrorism it is the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East currently.
They are involved in numerous wars and fund sectarian conflicts in order to gain further control over the Middle East and achieve their goal on a Shi’ite Crescent from the Persian Gulf to the Medetteranian.
But should they really be considered a military threat?
One of Israel’s top intelligence officials said on Tuesday that Iran’s “growing strength in Syria”, should be the number one focus of concern for Israel and the West.
The Intelligence Ministry’s director-general, Chagai Tzuriel, said: “The Iranian nuclear issue will of course always be a very high priority. But the negative potential built-in in the nuclear agreement will become more threatening as time goes by, while the threat of Iranian dominance in the region is immediate.”
He said that the Syrian Civil War created “a strong imbalance in the region to Iran’s benefit” and warned that this strength needed to be addressed immediately.
While it is true that the Iranian Regime has intervened in the Syrian Civil War, in order to prop up a dictatorship and have prolonged the war much beyond its natural end date, we cannot ignore that the Regime is on the losing side in that war.
The Iranian and Syrian Regimes are on the opposite side to major military forces like Saudi Arabia and the USA, not to mention that the Iranian Regime has lost far more fighters than they admit.
Officially, Iran claims that between 1,000 and 2,000 fighters under the banner of the Regime have died in Syria, but really, the figure is likely to be above 10,000. Their bodies are being buried in mass graves and the deaths are being covered up in order to boost morale at home.
While Tzuriel is right to be concerned about the idea of a land bridge from Iran to Lebanon which can be used to transport fighters, weapons, and money to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah; we must make sure not to blow this out of proportion.
He said: “Having Iran on the Iraq-Syria border is a new chapter. We may be entering the final stretch of Islamic State militancy in those countries… but we must then ask ourselves what are we paving the way for? What is the next threat? A mutation of global jihad or Iran, or both?”
The Regime needs to be prevented from taking the Syrian land which was reclaimed by coalition forces as it is a key crossing on the Iraq-Syria border, which may be used for the land bridge, but so far the American forces and their allies have been holding the Iranians off.
The Iranian Regime may be the number one state sponsor of terrorism, but they are not all that powerful when compared to their enemies. The Americans and the Saudi-led coalition can easily reduce Iranian influence by enforcing economic sanctions, cutting off their land bridge plot, and working together with the Iranian Resistance, who are widely supported by the people of Iran.
