Iranian troops pose for pics along Israel-Lebanon border

An elite wing of the Iranian military has claimed that its troops have been along Lebanon’s border with Israel.

A Twitter account associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps tweeted the statement on Thursday along with several pictures of Iranian soldiers posing with uniformed Lebanese counterparts.

A report by MEMRI, a Middle Eastern media watchdog, tracked the photos to a December 17 blog post affiliated with the Iranian Army, and noted that the pictures were taken in the Beqaa and Baalbek regions of southern Lebanon.

The soldiers in the pictures could be seem wearing military fatigues that included patches of the flags of Iran and Hezbollah, a terrorist group that has been a bitter rival of Israel, most notably in the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

The pictures from the blog post — which was titled “We are arriving… near the Mother of Corruption, the accursed Israel; soon we will pass over their bodies, Allah willing” — were stamped with the date October 24, 2014.

Iran is a staunch ally of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad and has deployed personnel to Syrian throughout the three-year civil war there to assist him. Tehran is also a rival of the Islamic State and other Sunni groups that have been operating in Syria and Iraq.

Yahya Rahim Safavi, a top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a former IRGC commander, claimed in May that Iran had succeeded in thwarting the “Western” overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria and that the Islamic Republic had established a military presence in Lebanon.

“Our frontmost line of defense is no more [in southern Iran], rather this line is now in southern Lebanon [on the border] with Israel, as our strategic depth has now stretched to the Mediterranean coasts and just to the north of Israel,” Safavi declared.

IRGC commander Ali Jafari added to Safavi’s claims in September when he was quoted divulging information about the group’s purpose: “The missions of the Qods Force [an IRGC elite unit] are [carried out] outside Iran’s borders.”

“Assistance to revolutionary and resistance movements, and to the oppressed, takes place worldwide. If there will be need for assistance in Syria, Iraq or Lebanon, we will assist,” he said.

On October 19, Tehran announced plans to send a massive weapons shipment to the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah “in order to improve security in Lebanon and the region, and to combat terrorists.”

Lebanon has been dealing with spillover from the Syrian civil war, with Hezbollah’s ground forces embroiled in a bloody conflict against opponents of the Assad regime. The rise of Sunni extremist groups has troubled Beirut, as the Islamic State and other groups have captured and executed several members of its armed forces.

Iran has considered Israel an arch-rival ever since the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s in 1979. A proxy war between the two states has heated up in recent years over allegations that Tehran’s nuclear program is being used to develop nuclear weapons, a claim that Iran denies.

Tehran is currently conducting a large-scale military drill in the Persian Gulf, including tests of its missile capabilities.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-troops-pose-for-pics-along-israel-lebanon-border/