Iranian MPs, IRGC leader review regional security, military strategy

Member of the Presidium Board of the Iranian parliament Ahmad Naderi has said that commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Hossein Salami and Iranian MPs discussed military strategies.

“Salami held a closed-door meeting to discuss military strategies and operations against Israel,” Naderi said in an interview with ISNA news agency, Caliber.Az reports.

"The main topic of the discussion was our military strategy in the region, including Israeli operations, as well as our own operations against Israel. We also discussed the current security, intelligence, and military situation in the region," he noted.

Naderi added that a senior commander from the IRGC's elite Quds Force was also expected to attend the meeting but failed to participate. The meeting also covered the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the future of the Middle East. Iranian military advisors and forces were present in Syria until the very end, but they are no longer there.

Earlier, top US intelligence official for Iran Norman Roule stated that Tehran openly distanced itself from Assad after having supported his regime throughout more than a decade of civil war.

“Israel killed a generation of Hezbollah and IRGC commanders with Syria expertise, for example, and they took bureaucratic networks and coordination capacity to their graves,” Roule said. 

The Assad regime’s collapse, he added, was a “strategic blow of historic proportions” for Iran.  Iran spent decades and billions of dollars building a network of militias and governments that allowed it to exert political and military influence across the Middle East, as well as deter foreign attacks on its soil. However, within weeks, the foundations of that alliance began to crumble. The departure of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad marks the latest strategic disaster for Iran, forcing the country to reconsider its long-standing security policies.

This comes at a time when Iran is also facing the election of President-elect Donald Trump, whose promises to increase pressure on Tehran further complicate the situation. Assad’s removal is the culmination of a series of events triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 last year, marking the most significant shift in Iran’s security environment since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. While the fall of Saddam Hussein ultimately opened opportunities for Iran, this time Tehran finds itself at a disadvantage.

By Naila Huseynova