Assad-era general asks Iran for funds to launch anti-Israel front in Syria

Ghiath Dalla may be on Don Quixotic mission because Iran is too busy trying to survive war, sources say

Columns of smoke rise from fires at the Sharan oil depot in Tehran, after Israeli strikes. Reuters

A top military figure under Syria's former president Bashar Al Assad has contacted Tehran for financial support to rebuild Iran's influence in the country and strengthen its position as it comes under attack by Israel, a Syrian security official and former regime operatives have told The National.

Iran is unlikely to divert resources from its current war effort but re-establishing a proxy presence in Syria could help it strategically in future, the sources said.

The proposal to Tehran came from Ghiath Dalla, a brigadier general in elite Fourth Division, the praetorian guard of the former Iran-backed regime and the military unit closest to Iran, within the past 10 days. He is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars to create a militia drawn from former members of Mr Al Assad's now disbanded army that would fight Syria's new government led by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham and launch attacks on Israeli targets, the sources said.

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Mr Dalla, like most of his peers and the deposed president, is from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, that dominated Sunni-majority Syria after a coup in 1963.

He is among thousands of Alawite security personnel who have been on the run after the Assad regime fell to HTS-led rebel forces on December 8. Hundreds of Alawite officers, including Mr Dalla, are believed to have fled to Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah group still wields significant influence, despite heavy losses in its war with Israel last year.

“He thinks that the [Israel-Iran] war is a golden chance to unite the Alawites and form a resistance force supported by Iran,” said the security official, who requested anonymity.

Mr Dalla commanded the 42nd Armoured Brigade, regarded as among the best-equipped and best-trained formations in the former military. During the 2011-2024 civil war it operated in southern Syria, from where proxy groups backed by Iran launched rocket attacks on Israel in the final year of the Assad regime.

“The south has remnants of Iranian proxies whom Dalla can re-activate to resume the attacks,” the security official said. The official said the seizure by authorities of Grad rockets at a warehouse in the southern Deraa province this week, and a rocket attack on June 3 on an Israeli-occupied area of the Golan Heights by a splinter Hezbollah group, were signs of the potential for destabilisation that could be boosted by Iranian money.

The official, who was a rebel fighting the regime in the northern province of Idlib, said the threat from Mr Dalla and his followers could not be underestimated.

“We were like him, hiding in the woods of Idlib, bereft of support. Once support [from Arab countries and Turkey] started coming, the game changed quickly,” he said, referring to the early years of the civil war.

The official would not be drawn on whom Mr Dalla has been in contact with in Iran, citing ongoing intelligence gathering. The contact was made directly, not through Hezbollah, he said.

A prominent figure in the Alawite community said Mr Dalla’s obvious recruiting pool comprises at least 100,000 former Alawite security personnel. Many of them, associated with atrocities under the former regime, have sought refuge in the Alawite Mountains in Syria's coastal region, the ancestral homeland of the minority sect.

However, widespread killings of Alawites in the area by pro-government forces have raised fears that the community might not survive under the new government led by HTS, a group once affiliated with Al Qaeda.

An estimated 1,300 Alawite civilians were killed over two days in March after gunmen from the sect resisted, mainly through ambushes, an HTS-led incursion into the Alawite Mountains. The security operation was aimed at cleansing the coastal provinces of regime remnants, according to the government.

Mr Dalla’s loyalists, called the Military Council for the Liberation of Syria, led the ultimately failed resistance.

The Alawite figure said Mr Dalla and his men, who are believed to number several thousand, still have an underground arsenal consisting mainly of light weapons but also significant amounts of medium weaponry, such anti-aircraft guns mounted on pickup trucks.

“He has been depleted cash-wise. But he is counting on the spreading fears that the Alawites have no home and the only path is resistance to create an Alawite province.”

He said many Alawites still see a future in acquiescing to the new order and do not want to be associated with Iran, and added that he himself had declined requests for money by insurgents associated with Mr Dalla.

A former Syrian intelligence operative, who is also Alawite, said Mr Dalla was trying to fill the leadership vacuum in the community created by the fall of Mr Al Assad, who fled to Moscow.

Unlike the former regime, Mr Dalla is, in the main, not viewed as corrupt. He is also religious, unlike the secular Assads, which would make him more trustworthy to Iran.

In contrast to the Assads, who have ”sacrificed the Alawites” for their own survival, Mr Dalla is a more ideological figure who believes that the only way for the community to survive is a long-term fight supported by Iran to a break away from Syria, the former intelligence operative said.

Observers are split on how much advantage a Iran would have had in the war with Israel had the Assad regime survived the civil war.

After Israeli attacks on Syrian security personnel and military infrastructure in 2023-2024, signs emerged that Mr Al Assad viewed his alliance with Iran as too costly for the regime.

It remains an open question whether the former president was willing, or able, to stop Iran from using Syria as a conduit for weapons and supplies to Hezbollah, once considered Tehran's first line of defence against Israel. The Israeli military had already largely destroyed Syrian air defences by the time Mr Al Assad was ousted, giving its air force freedom to operate over Syria.

However, Iran would be striking at Israel from short range with missiles and drones launched from Syria, instead of relying solely on long-distance attacks, had the former regime remained, a former member of Mr Al Assad's military said.

“It would have made a difference had they not lost Syria,” the source said. “But nowhere near enough to gain a decisive advantage”.