Iraqi fighters head to Syria to battle rebels but Lebanon’s Hezbollah stays out, sources say
AMMAN/BEIRUT — Hundreds of Iran-backed Iraqi fighters crossed into Syria on Monday to help the government fight rebels who seized Aleppo last week, but Lebanon’s Hezbollah has no plans for now to join them, according to sources.
Iran’s constellation of allied regional militia groups, aided by Russian air power, has been integral to the success of pro-government forces in subduing rebels in Syria who rose up against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011.
But that alliance faces a new test after last week’s lightning advance by rebels in northwest Syria, with Russia focused on war in Ukraine and Hezbollah’s leadership decimated by a war with Israel that ended in a ceasefire last week.
The rebel storm of Aleppo is the biggest success of anti-Assad fighters for years. Government forces had held complete control of Aleppo since capturing what was then Syria’s largest city in a siege in 2016, one of the major turning points of a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The head of Syria’s main opposition group abroad, Hadi al-Bahra, told Reuters the rebels were able to seize the city so quickly because Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups were distracted by their conflict with Israel.
Preparations had been made since last year for an assault on Aleppo, but it was held up by the war in Gaza, he said.
Syria’s civil war had been frozen since 2020, with Assad in control of most territory and all major cities. Rebels still held an enclave in the northwest, Turkey-backed forces held a strip along the northern border and U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces controlled a pocket in the northeast.
Any prolonged escalation in Syria risks further destabilizing a region roiled by the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, with millions of Syrians already displaced and with regional and global powers backing rival forces in the country.
Iraqi and Syrian sources confirmed the deployment of more Iran-backed Iraqi fighters to Syria. Iran’s Foreign Minister said Tehran “will provide any support needed” and that “resistance groups” would come to Assad’s aid.
At least 300 fighters, primarily from Iraq’s Badr and Nujabaa groups, crossed late on Sunday using a dirt road to avoid the official border crossing, two Iraqi security sources said, adding that they were there to defend a Shi’ite shrine.
A senior Syrian military source said the fighters had crossed in small groups to avoid airstrikes. “These are fresh reinforcements being sent to aid our comrades on the front lines in the north,” the source said.
The head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, which includes the major Shi’ite militia groups aligned with Iran, said no group under its umbrella had entered Syria, and that it does not operate outside Iraq.
The spokesperson of the Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group Kataib Hezbollah, meanwhile, said in a statement on Monday that the group was closely monitoring “the aggression of criminal groups on the Syrian people”, adding that they had not yet decided whether to send fighters.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah, long the most capable Iran-backed force on the battlefield and key to Assad’s military alliance in Syria, has not yet been asked to intervene and was not ready to send forces after its grueling conflict with Israel, said three sources familiar with the group’s thinking.
