Iranian ex-pats bolt Syria in wake of kidnapping

Tehran says it has flown home citizens following capture of 48 Iranian pilgrims near Damascus last week

Iran has evacuated most of its citizens living in Syria, a week after 48 Iranians were kidnapped by rebel forces near Damascus.

Iranian Ambassador to Syria Mohammad-Reza Sheibani told the Iranian newspaper Jaam-e Jam that Tehran had flown home most of its expatriates on three flights over the last few days.

Iran maintains close ties with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has been employing a bloody crackdown of rebels attempting to oust him from power.

The evacuation could be seen as a sign of Iranian fears that Assad will not be able to hold on to his power base much longer.

Earlier this month, 48 Iranians on a bus were nabbed by rebel forces while traveling from the suburb of Sayeda Zeinab, about 16 kilometers south of Damascus, to the airport to return home.

Tehran said the passengers were pilgrims, while the rebels have maintained that at least some of the captured men have military backgrounds. Iran later admitted that some of the men were retired members of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards.

Syria has long welcomed Iranian pilgrims visiting the ornate gold-domed shrine of Sayeda Zeinab, the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter; up to 700,000 pilgrims used to come every year, according to Iran’s state-run news agency IRNA, although the number has fallen precipitously since the 17-month uprising that has killed an estimated 20,000.

The kidnapping underscored the inability of the regime, which is fighting rebels in all the major cities of the country, to even control the immediate environs of the capital city.

The kidnapping was the largest such abduction of Iranian pilgrims, although it was not the first.

In January, gunman kidnapped 11 Iranian pilgrims driving from the Turkish border to Damascus. At least two were later freed with Turkish mediation. Seven Iranian engineers building a power plant in central Syria were kidnapped in December and the Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility, accusing them of aiding Assad’s regime. At least four have been released.