On August 16, 2016, the Russian Defense Ministry announced strategic bomber attacks against Syrian armed opposition sites from an Iranian airbase. This news had a greater impact in Iran domestically than that of the air raids on Aleppo, Deir el Zour and Idlib, which the statements claimed targeted bases of ISIS and Fateh al-Sham (previously known as Jabhat Al Nusra). This was the first time that Russia had been allowed to deploy forces on Iranian territory, a clear violation of the Iranian Constitution, and a painful blow to the assertions of sovereignty rooted in the revolutionary regime\u2019s culture and in Iranian culture in general.
\nThe Revolutionary Guards did not dare to defend this sin inside Iran for many reasons, with the Minister of Defense deciding, after some floundering, to end the mission. A number of deputies in the Shura Council demanded that the defense minister is questioned on the decision to allow it in the first place, with vitriolic criticism of the regime over this spreading like wildfire on social media.
\nConfusion seemed clear in the regime officials\u2019 statements, with their positions contradicting one another, from support for Russia\u2019s expansion if needed to harsh criticism of Russian Defense Ministry, which revealed hidden animosity.
\nRussians are behaving like children rushing to show off their strength, according to the statement from Iran’s defense minister on Iranian Second Channel. Russians probably do not know the Iranian Baha’i adage, “Cover your gold, your actions, and your faith.” Iranian resentment of Russia reveals the size of harm and damage especially that caused by soft power.
\nIranians slammed the glaring hypocrisy that led to the event, saying that while revolutionaries harshly condemn the Shah as a U.S. puppet, they had themselves committed a new sin that the Shah would not have committed had his reign survived. The American presence in Iran during the Shah\u2019s reign was limited to some military advisers and surveillance sites in the northeast of the country to monitor the Soviet Union, with even the Shah never allowing US forces and American bombers to exist on the Iranian land, or to launch strikes from its territory.
\nKhamenei faced a harsh fact and was unable to justify it; that is, Russia was the first foreign country to carry out announced military attacks from Iranian territory since World War I. Moreover, the relationship bringing the two countries together as allies rather than rivals which he has spoken about in speeches and the alleged strategic coalition have been shown to be a relationship of the stronger and weaker.
\nIn Syria, Iran’s decision to allow Russia to access air bases to support military operations is an admission of deficit against the Syrian opposition, and an end for field decisiveness allegations ability.
\nFor Czar Putin, the importance of using Iranian air bases goes beyond tactical advantages in the war against the Syrian armed groups, but is a part of a wider control in what was known as the \u201cAxis of Resistance\u201d, which is being employed as a tool to strengthen Moscow\u2019s political influence in the Middle East, as well as increasing the area it controls on the global power map.
\nSome US officials said that they were not surprised of Russian-Iranian military cooperation. In fact, this matter seemed confusing to them. Maybe they lack definite information about the Kremlin’s intention behind this move. What confirms this suspicion is a statement by State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner, who said that he thinks that they are still trying to assess exactly what they should do.
\nAs Obama began to write his memoirs, and to search for offers from American publishing houses, this new level of relations between Russia and Iran, proves that he committed a great strategic mistake when he opposed the establishment of safe zones in Syria, refrained from interfering, and opened the floodgates for Russia in the region.<\/p>\n
Opinions in this article reflect the writer\u2019s point of view, not necessarily the view of The Arabain GCIS<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On August 16, 2016, the Russian Defense Ministry announced strategic bomber attacks against Syrian armed opposition sites from an Iranian airbase. This news had a greater impact in Iran domestically than that of the air raids on Aleppo, Deir el Zour and Idlib, which the statements claimed targeted bases of ISIS and Fateh al-Sham (previously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":1041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[360,85,12,386,390,391,71,84,44,83,237],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-defense","tag-guards","tag-iran","tag-khamenei","tag-ministry","tag-moscow","tag-obama","tag-revolutionary","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1043,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}