UNITED NATIONS: Iran is turning Syria into the “world’s largest military base”, spending up to $35 billion on missile factories and an 82,000-strong deployment in the country to threaten the region, Israeli diplomat Danny Danon said on Thursday.
Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, said he was disclosing classified intelligence to the UN Security Council to show how Tehran’s “tentacles of terror” were spreading and posed a danger to Israel, the rest of the Middle East and beyond.
“Iran’s military is actively training these militant extremists from all over the world and using Syria as its strategic base,” Danon told UN diplomats in New York.
“It is also building missile factories in Syria, in effect turning the innocent people in the surrounding area into human shields. Iran is turning the entire country of Syria into the largest military base in the world.”
Iran’s UN ambassador was set to speak later at the same meeting. Tehran asserts that its military operations in Syria are against Daesh and other groups in support of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Tehran commands 82,000 fighters in Syria – 3,000 from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, 9,000 from its proxy militia Hezbollah, 10,000 Shiite recruits from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan and some 60,000 local fighters, Danon said.
The Islamic Republic has spent as much as $35 billion on bases, troops and missile factories in Syria, he said. It spends $800 million annually on Hezbollah, and $100 million each on proxy militias in Yemen, Gaza, Syria and Iraq, Danon added.
Sanctions relief under the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran, the US and other world powers unfroze cash now being spent by Iran’s generals, he said. Such spending grew from 17 percent of the government’s budget in 2014 to 22 percent in 2017.
“That’s $23bn spent on missiles, arms and other weapons of war,” he said. “The Shiite Crescent searches far beyond Israel, and it is larger and more powerful than ever, and it is aiming for the whole world.”
Syria’s eight-year-old war has claimed 500,000 lives and forced 5.5 million Syrians to flee the country.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf countries, the US and Israel have repeatedly warned of Iranian aggression in the region, which Tehran denies. Saudi Arabia was also set to address the UN Security Council on Thursday.
Iran building ‘world’s largest military base’ in Syria: Israeli diplomat
Iran building ‘world’s largest military base’ in Syria: Israeli diplomat
Related
Trump says Iran government change ‘best thing that could happen’
- US president's comments come after he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East
FORT BRAGG, United States: US President Donald Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen,” as he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East.
“Seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump told reporters at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina when a journalist asked if he wanted “regime change” in Iran.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” he told reporters.
Trump declined to say who he would want to take over in Iran from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he added that “there are people.”
He has previously backed off full-throated calls for a change of government in Iran, warning that it could cause chaos, although he has made threats toward Khamenei in the past.
Speaking earlier at the White House, Trump said that the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East to up the pressure on Iran.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump said.
The giant vessel is currently in the Caribbean following the US overthrow of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is one of 12 US ships already in the Middle East.
When Iran began its crackdown on protests last month — which rights groups say killed thousands — Trump initially said that the United States was “locked and loaded” to help demonstrators.
But he has recently focused his military threats on Tehran’s nuclear program, which US forces struck last July during Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war with Iran.
The protests have subsided for now but US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, urged international intervention to support the Iranian people.
“We are asking for a humanitarian intervention to prevent more innocent lives being killed in the process,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
It followed a call by the opposition leader, who has not returned to his country since before the revolution, for Iranians at home and abroad to continue demonstrations this weekend.
Iran and the United States, who have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after the revolution, held talks on the nuclear issue last week in Oman. No dates have been set for new talks yet.
The West fears the program is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that reaching an accord with Iran on inspections of its processing facilities was possible but “terribly difficult.”
Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week that he wanted to continue talks with Iran, defying pressure from his key ally for a tougher stance.
The Israeli prime minister himself expressed skepticism at the quality of any agreement if it didn’t also cover Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, 7,008 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the recent crackdown, although rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher.
More than 53,000 people have also been arrested, it added.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said “hundreds” of people were facing charges linked to the protests that could see them sentenced to death.
Figures working within the Iranian system have also been arrested, with three politicians detained this week from the so-called reformist wing of Iranian politics supportive of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The three — Azar Mansouri, Javad Emam and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh — were released on bail Thursday and Friday, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the ISNA news agency.
