BEIRUT — Top officials in Tehran have vowed to exact revenge for the heavy losses suffered by Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) troops in a battle in which Islamist fighters seized a village south of Aleppo over the weekend.
Mohsen Rezaee, the secretary of the powerful Expediency Discernment Council, warned Monday that “takfiris” would pay a “heavy price” after killing 13 IRGC members and injuring 21 others in Khan Tuman on May 6, the largest single one-day loss of Iranian troops since it entered the Syria conflict.
The Iranian general hailed the killed Iranian soldiers, all of whom were from Iran’s Mazandaran province along the Caspian Sea, writing in a post on his official Instagram account that their service evoked memories of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War.
Razaee returned to active service in the IRGC in May 2015 following a stint in politics that saw him unsuccessfully run for president in 2009 and 2013. Rezaee commanded the IRGC from 1981 to 2005.
The high IRGC casualty count around Khan Tuman has sent shockwaves across Iran, with local newspaper Ghanooncomparing the clashes to the Battle of Karbala, a highly significant event for Shiite Muslims in which the Imam Hussein died alongside his supporters.
Rezaee claimed that insurgents “took advantage of the ceasefire” to seize Khan Tuman, adding that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were supporting insurgents in Syria.
Another Iranian security official, in turn, said that the attack on the Aleppo village revealed problems with the cessation of hostilities implemented in Syria in late February 2016.
"Since [the] truce plan was put forward, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which didn't oppose it in principle, reminded of its structural problems," Ali Shamkhani—the the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council of Iran—said.
"This event showed that the concerns raised by Iran were fully correct and based on the realities on the ground and that ceasefire would be merely an opportunity for the recruitment and reinvigoration of the terrorist groups by the governments which support them," he further claimed.
Iran has suffered over 400 casualties in Syria, according to reports, including the loss of a number of high-ranking officers. The casualty counts began rising as Iran deployed larger number of troops in support of the Syrian army’s offensives against rebels starting with Russia’s aerial intervention in late September 2015.
In April, Tehran deployed its troops from its regular army, including the 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade, in its first official deployment outside of Iran since the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
SEE ALSO: Why Aleppo is Syria's fiercest battleground
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