Iran has now admitted that some of its 48 nationals detained in Syria by rebels, have, in the past, been members of its feared Revolutionary Guard. Yet it maintains that these individuals among the “pilgrims” captured by rebels on Saturday south of Damascus had retired from the elite force and were traveling in Syria with other civilians, including university students and public officials. The Free Syrian Army for its part maintains that the Iranians were actually on a reconnaissance mission and says that documents taken from the captives prove that some of the so-called pilgrims are active members of the Iranian security forces. The suggestion is that the pilgrimage was being used as a cover for these agents to spy on behalf of their commanders back in Tehran. If this is true, then it must be wondered what sort of action is being contemplated by the Iranian government in support of their long-time ally, the Assad regime. Indeed could it be that the Iranians are already covertly supplying military or intelligence support to Damascus? The presence of Iranian “volunteers” on the government side in the Syrian conflict would be a serious development, which would involve Tehran in a further confrontation with the international community. This would jeopardize even the minimal progress that has been made in persuading the country to open up its “peaceful” nuclear program to inspection by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. Some might even suspect that the Iranian government would welcome a dispute about its possible involvement in Syria, as a way of deflecting world attention from its key nuclear plans. The Russians of course will be delighted with a further row that will put the Iranians at odds with the United Nations and the Obama administration in Washington. The Kremlin's role in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program has always been ambivalent. Russia has supplied Iran with one nuclear reactor and this year agreed to build a second. Its contribution to the endless nuclear bargaining with Tehran has been to offer to take spent fuel for reprocessing, ostensibly taking the material out of any possible weaponization process. A fresh cause of dispute with Iran over Syria would also likely ease international pressure on the Kremlin's own discreditable supply of weapons and munitions to the Assad regime as well as its obdurate defense of Damascus in the UN Security Council. Even if the 48 Iranians are indeed luckless pilgrims, caught up in the conflict, such is the distrust that their government's record of dissimulation, half-truths and obstruction has created, that their fate has to be in some considerable doubt. Indeed, the Free Syrian Army has claimed that three of the Iranians have already been killed in shelling by Assad's forces. It has now threatened to execute the remainder of the “pilgrims” unless the artillery and aerial bombardment ceases. If the men are indeed shot, Iran will have an excuse to give more open support to Assad and just as importantly, the truth of their identity and their mission in Syria may never be known.
