Iran News Update, 16 May 2016 – On May 10, the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported that Eynollah Tabrizi, former deputy commander and advisor to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Karbala Corps, acknowledged that it is now four years since the inception of the Iranian regime’s military intervention in Syria. He conceded that 1200 IRGC forces have lost their lives in this conflict.
Tabrizi, the commander of the Aleppo front, made these remarks in a gathering of the Basij forces in Sari, the provincial capital of Mazandaran.
Tabrizi attempted to soft pedal the heavy blow dealt to the IRGC in Syria in the past weeks, especially on Friday, May 7, around Khan Touman in southern Aleppo where dozens of IRGC forces were killed or wounded in clashes with the Free Syrian Army.
Most of the casualties in this area were from the IRGC and had been dispatched there from Mazandaran. The number of casualties provoked such a widespread social reaction in Mazandaran that the regime was forced to remove the forces from IRGC Division 25 of Mazandaran from Syria.
Tabrizi attempted to portray the clashes and subsequent heavy casualties as the result of defending the shrine and confronting Daesh, the terrorist organization also known as ISIS. However, most of the regime’s casualties fell in Aleppo, which is over 300 kilometers from Shiite shrines. Moreover, the region in which the revolutionary guards were killed is nowhere near Daesh positions.