Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta charged Tuesday that Iran was helping to form a pro-government militia in Syria. Seated beside him, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said most of the recruits were Shiites.
Panetta said, “It is obvious that Iran has been playing a larger role in Syria in many ways. There’s now an indication that they’re trying to train a militia within Syria to be able to fight on behalf of the regimeÖ. We do not think that Iran ought to play that role…. That’s dangerous…. It’s adding to the killing that is going on in Syria.”
Syrian rebels last week showed a video of some of the Iranian hostages it has seized and claimed they were Iranian troops on a “reconnaissance” mission in Syria, saying that was proof Iran was offering military support to Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The rebels showed cards they said were active duty military IDs. Iran said they were discharge cards that Iranian men are to carry with them at all times. The photos of the cards seen by the Iran Times have not been clear enough to determine what kind of cards they really are.
Iran has rejected claims of military support for Assad, maintaining that it only provides humanitarian support, such as ambulances.
But acknowledging that “retired” members of the armed forces are among the hostages is a new development. “A number of the [hostages] are retired members of the Pasdaran and the Army. Some others were from other ministries,” Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi was quoted as telling reporters.
The Persian term Salehi used made clear the men were had been careerists who had spent decades in uniform, not just ordinary soldiers who had completed 20-some months of draft service as teenagers.
The rebels have announced that three of the 48 hostages died after a Syrian fighter jet fired at the building where they were being kept. Iran rejected the report and said it held the United States responsible for the safety of the 48 men because of US support for the rebels.
The rebels, for their part, are clearly targeting Iranians. Earlier this year, they kidnapped 11 men from each of two buses in Syria. They took the males and left the women and children behind. Iran said those were pilgrim buses, and the fact that the men had women and children with them gave credence to those claims. Those 22 men have all since been freed by the rebels.
Apparently prompted by the increased number of abduc-tions, Iranian Ambassador to Syria Mohammad-Reza Sheibani said his government has now evacuated most Iranian expatriates from Syria in three flights. It is unclear how many Iranian expatriates were in Syria, or if the three flights contained all the Iranians who remained behind after more than a year of violence in Syria.
Iran also said it was no longer sending pilgrims on organized tours to Syria.
As fighting raged between Assad’s regime and the rebels, Iran—shunned from all international conferences on Syria thus far—attempted to show some diplomatic muscle by organizing its own conference. Representatives from 29 countries —including China, Russia, Zimbabwe, Maldives, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela and Pakistan—attended the conference.
However, most countries were only represented by their ambassadors in Tehran. Only two foreign ministers were identified as attending—those from Iraq and Zimbabwe.
No conclusions or declarations were reached at the event. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the gathering was meant to “keep interest alive, after Kofi Annan’s failure to find a solution for Syria.”
American diplomats have blocked Iran’s participation in other international conferences on Syria because Washington considers the Islamic Republic to be part of the problem in Syria. American diplomats also expressed concern that Iran’s latest diplomatic attempts would further complicate the Syrian crisis.
“Distrust between Iran and the West means Iran’s attempt at a parallel diplomatic track simply exacerbates the divisions between those, like Russia and Iran, who want Assad to stay and the rest of the world, who see that his violent actions against his own people mean that this is simply untenable,” one unnamed Western diplomat told Agence France Presse (AFP).
For its part, Iran reiterated that it won’t abandon Syria or change its close partnership with the country. “Iran will not allow the axis of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be an essential part, to be broken in any way,” Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was quoted by Syrian TV as saying.