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The Russian military group in Syria had been quietly coordinating with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on long-term plans to pressure the United States to withdraw its forces from the country, a Pentagon official said on July 14.
“There’s a confluence of interests between those three groups, the Iranians, the Russians and the Syrians,” the unnamed official told Al-Monitor.
“I see evidence of operational-level planning between mid-level Quds Force leadership that’s operating in Syria [and] Russian forces that are operating in Syria,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
The official described the cooperation as “collaborative planning, collaborative understanding and intelligence sharing” at the “mid-level to upper echelon” of the respective Russian and Iranians in Syria.
“Frankly, [it’s] the same sorts of things that we would do with our partners in the face of something we were trying to accomplish,” the official said. “We see them doing that on their side, as they try to think about how they sync the different things that different arms of theirs are doing in order to put that pressure on us.”
The U.S. maintains some 900 troops in Syria under the pretext of fighting ISIS. The troops are deployed between key oil and gas fields in the northeastern governorates of Deir Ezzor and al-Hasakah and a garrison blocking a strategic international highway in the southeastern area of al-Tanf. Damascus does not approve of this presence and consider it to be an occupation.
The same Pentagon official told reporters that a Russian surveillance aircraft flew “for an extended period of time” on July 14 over al-Tanf garrison, in whan he described as an intelligence collecting mission.
The aircraft, an Antonov An-30, flew over the garrison, the official said, flying back and forth several times over the base and the surrounding area.
“They continue to undertake activities that are very concerning to us,” CNN quotes the official as saying.
The official admitted that U.S. forces couldn’t intercept the aircraft in time. He said that the U.S. has daily flight patterns determined by how many fighters are available, and tankers to refuel the fighters, as well as activity in Syria and Iraq and where they’re needed.
These flight schedules are routinely changed so that military patterns are not predictable, the official said, so the Russians would not have known in advance about it.
In what appears to be a response to these accusations, Rear Admiral Oleg Gurinov, deputy chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria, said on July 14 that fighters from the U.S. and its allies violated Syria’s airspace over al-Tanf five times during the past day.
“A pair of the coalition’s F-16 fighter jets, a pair of Typhoon combat aircraft, and one MC-12 plane again violated Syria’s airspace in the al-Tanf area, across which international air routes run, five times during the day,” he said.
According to Gurinov, actions of the U.S. and its allies create risks of air accidents with civilian planes. The commander also reported fourteen violations of the deconfliction protocols over Syria, agreed upon on 9 December 2019, by American drones.
Tensions between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria have been mounting since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine. Earlier this month, both sides exchanged accusations about violating the deconfliction protocols over the country on multiple occasions.
The recent escalation is mainly the result of U.S. attempts to expand its operations over Syria without any coordination with the country’s government, or the Russian military group there. While the U.S. claims that these operations are directed against ISIS, it is more likely that intelligence collection is the main purpose.
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i love how they name “the syrians” as some hostile foreign party to syria, while carefully avoiding to recall their own status as a completely illegitimate, illegally occupying foreign entity to begin with. if anything syrians have every right to be coordinating with their allies or whoever else they want in order to kick us forces out of their territory to the last sodlier for good.
gryzor syria the victim is being subtly demonized and made to look like a true aggressor
syrians are pro-greek and anti-turkish.
the syrians are not united though. russia/saa and irgc/hezbollah have different strategic interests for example.
you do realise that syria is a secular nation, and they all lived in peace until usaid turned up, back in 2012. russia is there to assist syria, at the invitation of syria and fully respectful of syrian sovereignty. aren’t irgc/hexbollah also there to assist the people of syria, against the demands of usaid terrorists?
hezbollah and irgc have divergent interests, for example, iran supports qatar and morsi while assad and russia support uae and sisi. iran is friendly with turkey, russia neither friend nor enemy and assad is enemy to erdogan.
its what they deserve
of course the russians and iranians would coordinate with syria as their presence was requested by the elected government. what are the americans doing in syria, aside from harboring terrorists and stealing syrian natural resources.
syria is being dismantled so it is normal for this thing to happen. turkey also cooperates with iran on many subjects. if the us leaves then it will be russia/egypt/ba’athists/nasserists vs turkey/iran/muslim brotherhood/hezbollah.
unlike iran and russia, who were invited to help syria, the us has no legal reason to be there. no declaration of war, no un authority and no invite. so why are they still there and refusing to move out? besides pillaging the oil.
they are there to stop russia/saa, turkey/sna and iran/hezbollah.