Thursday January 1, 2015

I've Been Thinking:

Deputy head of the Iranian elite unit called the Revolutionary Guards announced yesterday that Iran has more forces fighting ISIS than does Hezbollah.

General Hossein Salami said that the number of their Guard soldiers in Iraq and Syria far outnumbers the soldieries that Hezbollah has sent over. His point was to say that Iran is actively fighting ISIS on the ground. And he was explaining why a Guards Brigadier General was killed earlier in the week in Iraq while confronting ISIS.

To get some perspective, the best estimates we have are that when Hezbollah was actively fighting ISIS in Syria they had 15,000 fighters there. And those fighters made a difference. Hezbollah swayed the tide of the conflict and successfully brought the momentum over to the Assad side.

Iran wants everyone to know that the United States created a coalition for air strikes against ISIS. But everyone knows that real transformation can only happen with forces on the ground. And indeed, that is what happened. Iran put boots on the ground to try to root out ISIS.

I would bet - and it is certainly not beyond the realm of possible, that we will see US aircraft laying down cover for Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen as they battle ISIS.

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