Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani has reportedly toured regime frontlines in Aleppo amid reports his country’s troops were deploying for a major campaign there.
A picture of a smiling Soleimani standing in front of a motley crew of armed men circulated across pro-Assad social media outlets early Friday afternoon.
The News Reported from the City of Aleppo Facebook page posted the image with a caption claiming Soleimani was standing in front of Syrian army troops, “men of the resistance”—a reference to Hezbollah—and fighters from Iraq’s mainly Shiite Popular Mobilization militia force.
The pro-regime group added the picture was taken “before the launch of the Battle of Decisiveness in southern Aleppo.”
Meanwhile, Heroism of the Syrian Army—another pro-regime Facebook page—posted the same image, saying the Soleimani was alongside troops from the Syrian army and local militias based in Aleppo.
On Tuesday afternoon, a flurry of social media posts purported to show Soleimani addressing a crowd of Hezbollah and IRGC soldiers in northern Syria, while a video showed a uniformed man with a Lebanese accent pledging allegiance to the Shiite Imam Ali in front of the Iranian general.
What appears to be a Hezbollah officer speaking to Soleimani.
Soleimani’s public appearances come after Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar reported Tuesday morning that the Iranian pointman arrived in northern Syria on Sunday to supervise the preparations for a massive offensive on the Aleppo front.
The pro-Hezbollah daily said that Iran has begun to deploy troops to Syria to take part in a major ground operation aimed at pushing toward the Turkish border.
Field sources told the daily that an unprecedented number of troops is being massed on the northern fronts adjacent to all of the militant positions from rural Hama to the Al-Ghab Plain, southern rural Idlib, the Jisr al-Shughour area as well as the area next to rural Latakia.
According to the sources, the preparations show that a large operation is “very near” to the deadline of its launch, and will include all of these areas.
On October 13, Reuters reported that Syrian regime forces backed by Hezbollah and Iranian troops were preparing for a campaign in Aleppo.
“There is a large mobilization of the Syrian army ... elite Hezbollah fighters, and thousands of Iranians who arrived in stages in recent days,” one unnamed official told the news agency.
Three days later, Reuters reported that a Syrian army offensive south of Aleppo was being supported by Iranian and Hezbollah fighters.
“This is the promised battle,” a source said.
The Washington Post has also covered Iran’s alleged troop build-up in Aleppo, citing an unnamed US defense official on as saying that an “element from Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps has gathered near the Syrian city of Aleppo.”
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