Iranian Official Admits 2,100 Combat Fatalities in Syria and Iraq

In a new revelation on Monday, a senior Iranian official said that more than 2,000 combatants dispatched by Iran to fight in Syria and Iraq have been killed in recent years. “At present, we have 2,100 defender of shrine martyrs and the path for martyrdom is still open,” Mohammad Ali Shahidi Mahlati, the head of Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs’ and Veterans’ Affairs, said while speaking at a ceremony commemorating Iranian “martyrs” over the past 38 years. Iran’s Mehr News Agency also quoted Shahidi, who is directly appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as saying that the Islamic Republic has had a total of 230,000 “martyrs” since the 1979 revolution.   

Comment: Shahidi did not reveal nationalities of those killed in Syria, but “defenders of shrines” is a term used by Iranian officials for Iranian, Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militants who fight in Syria and Iraq under the leadership of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.)’s elite Quds Force.

The 2,100 figure was more than the double the number Shahidi had provided last November. “At present, the number of martyrs defending the shrines has now surpassed 1,000 in our country. Of course we are indebted to all of them,” he had said. But perhaps he was then referring only to casualties in Syria. In recent years, the I.R.G.C. has recruited, trained and deployed thousands of Afghan and Pakistani Shiites to fight in Syria. It has also dispatched scores of Iranian “volunteers” and its own commanders to help the embattled regime of Iran’s ally Bashar al-Assad. The large number of Iranian casualties, including senior I.R.G.C. commanders, discredits Tehran’s claim that Iranian military officers play only an advisory role in the wars in Syria and Iraq.