Fars News, an outlet that is linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), reported that ethnic Chechen forces from Russia are now acting as police units in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The outlet reported that Chechens had also from December 2016 been deployed “to serve in the military police to protect Russia's Khmeimim air base in Syria.”

Iranian state-controlled media appear to want to eagerly present this kind of deployment by ethnic Chechens to Syria as a positive development simply because the Chechens happen to be Muslims. The Chechen leader, Ramazan Kadyrov, was reported to have said that meetings have been held with ‘Brother Basher” and other Syrian officials as part of the direct interactions between Damascus and the Chechens. There is no doubt, however, that Moscow is closely orchestrating this latest decision for the Chechen deployment in Aleppo.

In fact, the Iranian posture echoes Moscow’s official position, which is to maintain that the shared religion of Islam makes the presence of Chechens fighting in Syria on behalf of Moscow and in defense of Bashar Al Assad a “natural phenomenon.” 

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