Heavy Losses Drive Iranian Guards to Revamp Syrian Command

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) were this week forced by the rising Iranian death toll in Syria to embark on the restructure of its Syrian command, after another 12 officers lost their lives in Syria – most in the fighting south of Aleppo. Brig. Gen. Abdolreza Majiri, who was among them, became the eighth senior Iranian commander to die in the country since Oct. 7. Tehran has lost some 40 percent of its generals and high officers. The IRGC chiefs were driven to overhaul their Syrian command structure not only by popular grumbling over the rows of coffins coming in from the battlefield, but also in the face of Russia’s low opinion of the Iranian generals’ poor performance in combat
Brigade and division commanders are being pressed forward to fill the gaps. This is the first time since the 1987 Iran-Iraq war that second-tier commanders are being deployed in real combat.
DEBKA Weekly’s military sources note that while an Iranian general arrives on the Syrian front alone and takes command of a sector, the second-ranking officers come accompanied by complete operational command staffs. They take charge not only of the sector but also of the allied non-Iranian military forces made up of Syrian, Hizballah and Iraqi Shiites, which are the backbone of the force.