Iran pulls most of its forces out of Syria as rebels rebuild after fall of Assad regime: report

Iran has pulled out nearly all of its forces from Syria following the rebels’ victory against the Assad regime, dealing a major blow to Tehran’s influence in the region, officials said.

Iranian forces, which had long been present in Syria under an alliance with President Bashar al-Assad, are all but gone as its members have all either fled or been ordered to withdraw since the rebels took over the nation last month, Western and Arab officials told the Wall Street Journal.

Images of abandoned military vehicles, weapons and equipment near the border with Lebanon suggest many Iranian soldiers were forced to quickly flee as the rebels took Syria in just 11 days.

When asked if the Iranians had truly fled Syria, Barbara Leaf, the US State Department’s top Middle East official simply answered, “Pretty much, yes.”

“It’s extraordinary,” Leaf told the WSJ about the historic withdrawal.

Syria stood as Iran’s main state ally in the Middle East which helped bolster Tehran’s self-proclaimed “Axis of Resistance,” where its terror proxies would repeatedly attack US and Israeli bases.

Iran also used Syria to house Hezbollah bases, which have since been destroyed by Israel or ransacked by the rebel forces.

With Assad forced to flee the country after the rebel’s lightning offensive, Iran has effectively lost its key ally in the Middle East, a fact that is not lost on Tehran as it tries to stir unrest in Syria.

The nation’s new Sunni leadership has spent years opposing Iran and Assad’s regime, with the rebel’s chief group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, appearing to shed its radical past in an effort to appeal to the West.

Rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has denounced his former al-Qaeda ties, touted that his group’s quick victory over Assad has effectively “set the Iranian project in the region back by 40 years.”

Officials believe the rebels’ deep-seated hatred and distrust of Tehran will successfully keep the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp away from Syria and unable to re-establish its land bridge to Hezbollah, whose leadership and facilities have suffered severe blows from Israel over the past year.

Iran appears to recognize the threat the rebels’ fledgling government poses, with hard-liners in Tehran openly calling for a counter-revolution.

Last week, the IRGC media outlet Sepah News slammed Syria’s new government as “takfiri terrorists,” a term Iran used to refer to ISIS members, with reports claiming that an uprising in Damascus was imminent.

The setback for Tehran comes on the heels of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House later this month, with the incoming president reportedly weighing preemptive airstrikes against Iran to halt its nuclear program.