WarSclerotic

Earlier this month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based watchdog group, reported that Israeli fighter jets struck Hezbollah positions on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. There was no Israeli comment on the claim.

The report said one of the targets was a post on Tel al-Harra, a mountain that is considered a strategic point that overlooks the Golan Heights, while the other was in Quneitra, near the UN-monitored border crossing with Israel, where Arab media reports a Syrian air-defense position and a Hezbollah intelligence center are located.

The Iran-backed Lebanese terror group had been trying to set up a front on the Syrian Golan for years, but had previously been unable to gain a sufficient foothold in the area. However, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s conquest of the border area last summer provided the regime-allied organization with an opportunity to once again attempt to establish the necessary infrastructure with which it could threaten Israel near the border.

The alleged Israeli strikes near the border were a rare occurrence. In the past Israel has targeted villages and towns along the Golan Heights frontier after identifying Iranian and Hezbollah attempts to establish cells and infrastructure in the area.

But the incident also highlighted a reality once unthinkable in Syria: With Hezbollah one of the chief powers setting the tone in the country after years of civil war, Syrian army forces are now in some cases taking their orders from the organization — and helping it spy on Israel.

Hezbollah’s presence in Syrian territory opposite the Israeli border is a natural continuation of the group’s expanding activity in the Middle East (in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, among others), and the civil war that has been raging in Syria for approximately eight years.

Its increased clout is particularly noticeable in the region of southern Syria that the Syrians call Hauran. In the same area that gave rise to the protests against Assad in March 2011 in the city of Daraa, a situation has now formed in which Syrian soldiers receive “recommendations” — which are in effect orders — from Hezbollah commanders.

A segment of the Syrian army that controls the southern part of the country works closely with many consultants from Hezbollah, which use it for purposes such as intelligence-gathering, and is also helping the Lebanon-based group prepare for an expected future war with Israel (as well as assisting it in dealing with local opposition).

Illustrative: Syrian troops flash the victory sign next to the Syrian flag in Tel al-Haara, the highest hill in the southwestern Daraa province, Syria, July 17, 2018. (SANA via AP)

To put it in the simplest terms, these Syrian troops are now serving Hezbollah’s Shiite army in Lebanon. Bashar’s deceased father, Hafez Assad, would be rolling in his grave: During his time the elder Assad waged war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and killed hundreds of its members.

How did the tables so turn? The civil war was, without a doubt, the key event, with the Syrian army now dependent on assistance from Hezbollah and Iran in order to survive.

Earlier in the war, when Assad’s regime appeared to be on its last legs, Hezbollah sent numerous advisers to the region whose stated purpose was simply to aid the fighting against the opposition groups in Hauran. A great deal has happened since then, and about a year ago — with Assad buoyed also by Iranian and particularly Russian forces — it became clear that the battle for Syria had been decided: the regime had won. But Hezbollah didn’t stop at that point — it began to establish its forces permanently throughout Syria, particularly in its southern sector.

This process took place with quite a bit of hesitation by Hezbollah’s leaders, especially regarding the financial implications of leaving troops on Syrian soil. In the end, the strategic thinking that troops should be positioned against Israel on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights won out.

This had to be done clandestinely though: Following the understandings that Israel reached with Russia, Iranian and Hezbollah presence is prohibited at a distance of approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Syrian border with Israel.

And thus a “Southern Headquarters” operated by Hezbollah is currently operating in secret in the territory known as Hauran. It is a military organization in every sense, which operates with several dozen Lebanese and hundreds of Syrians, most of them from Hauran: Thanks to financial difficulties brought on by the war, Hezbollah has had little trouble recruiting quite a few locals to serve its purposes.

The force, led by Lebanese commander Munir Ali Naim Shaiti (better known by the alias Hajj Hashem), is now focusing less and less upon threats at home and much more on the old threat: Israel.

The Southern Headquarters is armed with weapons that include antitank missiles and particularly powerful short-range rockets with a minimum weight of approximately 250 kilograms and effectiveness at a range of approximately four kilometers. Their original purpose was to strike opposition targets, but they are now being repurposed with the aim of destroying Israeli villages on the Golan Heights or the upper Galilee.

Illustrative: A picture taken from the Israeli Golan Heights shows a smoke plume rising during airstrikes backing a Syrian-government-led offensive in the southwestern province of Daraa, July 23, 2018. (JALAA MAREY/AFP)

The purpose of the Southern Headquarters is to collect high-quality intelligence about the Israeli side of the border. The headquarters works under the radar of international forces and does its best to hide its tracks. Seeking to avoid Israeli attacks on its forces, Hezbollah has done its best to camouflage its activity. Its people do not act openly, and it has recruited troops from Syria Army’s 1st Corps to assist its operations.

It is believed the group has set up approximately 20 lookout positions on the Syrian Golan Heights facing Israeli territory. Each such outpost is manned by Syrian soldiers, often accompanied by Hezbollah members but sometimes on their own. These soldiers gather intelligence according to the orders of Hezbollah: training exercises on the Israeli side, the day-to-day security routine, activity in villages and more. The information is sent to several Hezbollah operations rooms in the Syrian Golan Heights, and from there it is relayed to headquarters in Lebanon and/or to the Iranians.

In addition, the Southern Headquarters makes use of technology to attempt to listen in on the Israeli side, via communications networks or other means.

Simultaneously Hezbollah continues to build its offensive capabilities in the Golan Heights. These efforts are led by veteran terrorist Ali Musa Daqduq, also known as Abu Hussein Sajed, a Lebanese man who is wanted in the United States for attacks against American forces in Iraq, including planning an attack in Karbala in 2007 that resulted in the deaths of five US soldiers.

Hezbollah leader Ali Musa Daqduq, suspected of forming a terror cell for the organization in the Syrian Golan Heights. (Israel Defense Forces)

According to the US Treasury Department, Daqduq has served “as commander of a Hezbollah special forces unit and chief of a protective detail for Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.” Daqduq was arrested in 2007 and imprisoned in Iraq, but was released five years later and sent to Lebanon.

Daqduq leads an operational unit in every sense, whose purpose is to act mainly in situations of large-scale escalation and carry out high-quality terror attacks. In March, the IDF said it had exposed a nascent Hezbollah terror cell led by Daqduq and established in a border village on the Syrian Golan Heights.

While the commanding officers of this unit are Lebanese, most of its troops — which number approximately two hundred — are Syrian, who were recruited from, among other places, Druze communities such as Khadar and Arnah on the Syrian Golan Heights.

The concern now is that the intelligence and operational arms will join forces: If Hezbollah commanders decide to use Daqduq’s troops to carry out an attack on Israel from the Syrian Golan Heights, they will likely do so with intelligence provided by Hajj Hashem’s Southern Headquarters.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — As the US piles sanction after sanction on Iran, it’s the average person who feels it the most.

From a subway performer’s battered leather hat devoid of tips, to a bride-to-be’s empty purse, the lack of cash from the economic pressure facing Iran’s 80 million people can be seen everywhere.

Many blame US President Donald Trump and his maximalist policy on Iran, which has seen him pull out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and levy punishing US sanctions on the country.

In recent weeks, Iran has threatened to break out of the deal unless European powers mitigate what it calls Trump’s “economic warfare.” Iran also appeared ready to push back against the buildup of US forces in the region, after shooting down an American drone it says violated its airspace last week.

In response, US officials have vowed to pile on more sanctions.

But alongside Trump, many Iranians blame their own government, which has careened from one economic disaster to another since its Islamic Revolution 40 years ago.

“The economic war is a reality and people are under extreme pressure,” said Shiva Keshavarz, a 22-year-old accountant soon to be married.

She said government leaders “keep telling us to be strong and endure the pressures, but we can already hear the sound of our bones breaking.”

Motorbike taxi divers carry goods at the old main bazaar in Tehran, Iran on June 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Walking by any money exchange shop is a dramatic reminder of the hardships most people are facing. At the time of the nuclear deal, Iran’s currency traded at 32,000 rials to $1. Today, the numbers listed in exchange shop windows have skyrocketed — it costs over 130,000 rials for one US dollar.

Inflation is over 37%, according to government statistics. More than 3 million people, or 12% of working-age citizens, are unemployed. That rate doubles for educated youth.

Depreciation and inflation make everything more expensive — from fruits and vegetables to tires and oil, all the way to the big-ticket items, like mobile phones. A simple cell phone is about two months’ salary for the average government worker, while a single iPhone costs a 10 months’ salary.

“When importing mobile phones into the country is blocked, dealers have to smuggle them in with black market dollar rates and sell them for expensive prices,” said Pouria Hassani, a mobile phone salesman in Tehran. “You can’t expect us to buy expensive and sell cheap to customers. We don’t want to make a loss either.”

Hossein Rostami, a 33-year-old motorbike taxi driver and deliveryman, said the price of brake pads alone had jumped fivefold.

“The cause of our problems is the officials’ incompetence,” he told The Associated Press as fellow motorbike drivers called out for passengers in Tehran. “Our country is full of wealth and riches.”

The riches part is true — Iran is home to the world’s fourth-largest proven reserve of crude oil and holds the world’s second-largest proven reserve of natural gas, after Russia.

But under Trump’s maximum-pressure campaign, the US has cut off Iran’s ability to sell crude on the global market, and threatened to sanction any nation that purchases it. Oil covers a third of the $80 billion a year the government spends in Iran, meaning that a fall in oil revenues cuts into its social welfare programs, as well as its military expenditures.

The rest of the country’s budget comes from taxes and non-oil exports, among them oil-based petrochemical products that provide up to 50% of Iran’s $45 billion in non-oil export.

In this photo from August 8, 2018, a man exchanges Iranian Rials for US Dollars at an exchange shop in the Iranian capital Tehran. (AFP Photo/Atta Kenare)

In Tehran’s Laleh park, retired school teacher Zahra Ghasemi criticized the government for blaming “every problem” on US sanctions.

She says she has trouble paying for her basic livelihood. The price of a bottle of milk has doubled, along with that of vegetables and fruit.

“We are dying under these pressures and a lack of solutions from officials,” Ghasemi said.

Years of popular frustration with failed economic policies triggered protests in late 2017, which early the following year spiraled into anti-government demonstrations across dozens of cities and towns.

The current problems take root in Iran’s faltering efforts to privatize its state-planned economy after the devastating war with Iraq in the 1980s, which saw 1 million people killed.

But Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said earlier this month that the crunch on oil exports was hitting harder today than during the 1980s war, when Saddam Hussein’s forces targeted Iran’s oil trade.

“Our situation is worse than during the war,” Zanganeh said. “We did not have such an export problem when Saddam was targeting our industrial units. Now, we cannot export oil labeled Iran.”

Still, many Iranians pin the economic crisis on corruption as much as anything else.

Iranians drivers fill their tanks at a gas station in the capital Tehran on November 5, 2018. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)

“Our problem is the embezzlers and thieves in the government,” said Nasrollah Pazouki, who has sold clothes in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar since before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “When people come to power, instead of working sincerely and seriously for the people, we hear and read after a few months in newspapers that they have stolen billions and fled.”

He added: “Whose money is that? It’s the people’s money.”

Sanctions do cause some of the problems, said Jafar Mousavi, who runs a dry-goods store in Tehran. But many of the woes are self-inflicted from rampant graft, he said.

“The economic war is not from outside of our borders but within the country,” Mousavi said. “If there was integrity among our government, producers and people, we could have overcome the pressures.”

Yet people come and go each day to work on Tehran’s crowded metro, seemingly earning less each day for the same work. In one train car, Abbas Feayouji and his son Rahmat play mournful-sounding traditional love songs known as “Sultan-e Ghalbha,” or “King of Hearts” in Farsi.

“People pay less than before,” said the elder Feayouji, a 47-year-old father of three, as he took a short break to speak to the AP. “I don’t know why they do, but it shows people have less money than before.”