Majority of Iranian forces, Tehran-backed militias fled Syria after fall of Assad — WSJ report

The majority of Iran’s forces have withdrawn from Syria over the past month and various armed groups backed by Tehran have disbanded following the fall of the Assad regime, the Wall Street Journal reports.

For years, Iran propped up deposed president Bashar al-Assad, while at the same time using Syria as a vital land route through which it could smuggle weapons to the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon. As such, thousands of Iranian fighters and members of Iran-backed groups were present across Syria when a rebel offensive overthrew the decades-old Assad regime in December.

At the time of the rebel victory over Assad, fighters from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were mainly stationed in eastern Syria, the WSJ reports, citing Western and Arab officials. Stationed alongside them were Iraqi, Lebanese, Afghan and Syrian militia forces.

The majority of those stationed in eastern Syria have since fled across the border to al-Qaim in Iraq, the report states, while IRGC forces previously stationed in Aleppo have returned to Tehran. It adds that Hezbollah troops that had been stationed in western Syria returned to Lebanon by road.

The WSJ adds that Iraq’s embassy in Washington and the Iraqi foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment, while the Iranian mission to the UN declined to comment on the withdrawal of its forces.