NCRI Statements | Terrorism and Fundamentalism
Khamenei Grants Iranian Citizenship to the Afghan Mercenaries to Expand Their Dispatch to Syria
- Saturday, 18 March 2017 13:15
As the clerical regime of Iran is facing problem in sending more forces to Syria due to its extensive losses in that country, Khamenei has ordered Iranian citizenship to be granted to those Afghan citizens who are involved in the killing of the Syrian people in the Army called Fatemune, announced a mullah by the name of Mohammad-Ali Shahidi Mahallati, head of a foundation called Shahid (Javan Newspaper affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps - IRGC, March 12, 2017)
In an interview with the Javan Newspaper, Mullah Mahallati acknowledged that only during the past year, number of the losses of the regime’s Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries in Syria and Iraq, who have been falsely described by the regime as defenders of the holy shrine, increased by 2000.
The Iranian Resistance declared in July 2016 that Afghan citizens who have been dispatched to Syria by the IRGC add up to 15,000 to 20,000. In January 2017, Hossein Yekta, an IRGC brigadier general, announced the number of Afghans fighting in Syria under the command of the IRGC as 18,000.
According to information from inside the regime, during February 2017, two thousands Afghan mercenaries were dispatched to Syria every week from Qods Forces garrison in Shahriyar, south-west of Tehran, in order to replace within a period of one and half to two months the Afghan forces previously sent to Syria.
A large number of these elements are prisoners who are sentenced to execution. Thus, they should choose between being executed and going to Syria. Some of them are asylum-seekers who are threatened to be expelled out of Iran. There are also a large number of them who accept to be mercenaries of the regime in return for promises of receiving high wages and a guaranteed future.
At present, the IRGC pays almost 600 dollars per month to its Afghan mercenaries for the period they are present in Syria. Therefore, by paying money to non-Iranian mercenaries and granting citizenship to some of them, Khamenei is attempting to prevent the overthrow of Bashar Assad’s dictatorship through sending these mercenaries into the inferno of his anti-humane war against Syrian people. One of the reasons for appointing the IRGC brigadier general Iraj Masjedi as the regime’s ambassador to Iraq is also to organize the Iraqi Hashd-A-Sha’bi and paramilitary forces to be dispatched to Syria in greater numbers.
Referring to these foreign mercenaries, the Head of the IRGC, Mohammad-Ali Jafari, said on March 10, 2017, “Accepting the Supreme religious leader has gone beyond Iran’s frontiers and an Islamic united nation is being formed.” In a spurious show of force, he added, “With the God’s favour, we are on the track that will lead to the reign of Islam over the whole world.” Also, the Commander of the IRGC Air Forces, Ali Fadavi, declared on March 13, 2017, “We are fighting not in our home but thousands of kilometers away from our borders.”
As the Iranian Resistance has repeatedly emphasized, the only solution for the crisis in the region is to cut the hands of the clerical regime of Iran and the IRGC with its paramilitary mercenaries off the region. In 2003 when the gates of Iraq were opened to the Iranian mullahs, they turned this country into a springboard for exporting their fundamentalism and terrorism to Syria, Yemen and the entire region. Therefore, the crisis will end only through their expulsion.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
March 17, 2017
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
March 17, 2017
