Center East correspondent, BBC World Service
BBCMouldy half-finished meals on bunk beds, discarded army uniforms and deserted weapons – these are the remnants of an abrupt retreat from this base that when belonged to Iran and its affiliated teams in Syria.
The scene tells a narrative of panic. The forces stationed right here fled with little warning, forsaking a decade-long presence that unravelled in mere weeks.
Iran was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most important ally for greater than 10 years. It deployed army advisers, mobilised overseas militias, and invested closely in Syria’s warfare.
Its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) constructed deep networks of underground bases, supplying arms and coaching to hundreds of fighters. For Iran, this was additionally a part of its “safety belt” towards Israel.
We’re close to Khan Shaykhun city in Idlib province. Earlier than Assad’s regime fell on 8 December, it was one of many key strategic places for the IRGC and its allied teams.
From the primary street, the doorway is barely seen, hidden behind piles of sand and rocks. A watchtower on a hilltop, nonetheless painted within the colors of the Iranian flag, overlooks the bottom.
A receipt pocket book confirms the bottom’s title: The Place of Martyr Zahedi – named after Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a high IRGC commander who was assassinated in an alleged Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria on 1 April, 2024.
The provides just lately ordered – we discovered receipts for sweets, rice, cooking oil – counsel day by day life continued right here till the final moments. However now the bottom has new occupants – two armed Uyghur fighters from Hayaat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist militant group whose chief Ahmed al-Sharaa has turn out to be the brand new interim president of Syria.
The Uyghurs arrived abruptly in a army automobile, asking for our media accreditation.
“Iranians had been right here. All of them fled,” one among them says, talking in his mom tongue, a dialect of Turkish. “No matter you see right here is from them. Even these onions and the leftover meals.”
Bins stuffed with recent onions within the courtyard have now germinated.
The bottom is a labyrinth of tunnels dug deep into white rocky hills. There are bunk beds in some rooms with no home windows. The roof of one of many corridors is draped in material within the colors of the Iranian flag and there are a couple of Persian books on a rocky shelf.
They left behind paperwork containing delicate info. All in Persian, they’ve particulars of fighters’ private info, army personnel codes, residence addresses, spouses’ names and cell phone numbers in Iran. From the names, it is clear that a number of fighters on this base had been from the Afghan brigade that was fashioned by Iran to combat in Syria.
Sources linked to Iran-backed teams instructed BBC Persian that the bottom homes primarily Afghan forces accompanied by Iranian “army advisers” and their Iranian commanders.
Tehran’s essential justification for its army involvement in Syria was “to combat towards jihadi teams” and to guard “Shia holy shrines” towards radical Sunni militants.
It created paramilitary teams of primarily Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqi fighters.
But, when the ultimate second got here, Iran was unprepared. Orders for retreat reached some bases on the final second. “Developments occurred so quick,” a senior member of an Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary group tells me. “The order was to only take your backpack and go away.”
A number of sources near the IRGC instructed the BBC that a lot of the forces needed to flee to Iraq, and a few had been ordered to go to Lebanon or Russian bases to be evacuated from Syria by the Russians.
An HTS fighter, Mohammad al Rabbat, had witnessed the group’s advance from Idlib to Aleppo and Syria’s capital Damascus.
He says they thought their operation would take “a couple of 12 months” and greatest, they’d “seize Aleppo in three to 6 months”. However to their shock, they entered Aleppo in a matter of days.
The regime’s fast downfall was caused by a sequence of occasions after Hamas’s 7 October assault on Israel.
That assault led to an escalation of Israeli air strikes towards the IRGC and Iran-backed teams in Syria and a warfare towards one other key Iranian ally – the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, whose chief was killed in an air strike.
This “state of affairs of psychological collapse” for Iran and Hezbollah was central to their downfall, says 35-year-old fighter Rabbat.
However probably the most essential blow got here from inside: there was a rift between Assad and his Iran-linked allies, he says.
“There was an entire breakdown of belief and army co-operation between them. IRGC-linked teams had been blaming Assad of betrayal and believing that he’s giving up their places to Israel.”
As we cross by way of Khan Shaykhun, we come throughout a road painted within the colors of the Iranian flag. It leads to a faculty constructing that was getting used as an Iranian headquarters.
On the wall on the entrance of the bathrooms, slogans learn: “Down with Israel” and “Down with the USA”.
It was evident that these headquarters had been additionally evacuated at quick discover. We discovered paperwork categorized as “extremely delicate”.
Abdullah, 65, and his household are among the many only a few locals who stayed and lived right here alongside the IRGC-led teams. He says this life was onerous.
His home is only some metres away from the headquarters and in between, there are deep trenches with barbed wire.
“Motion at night time was prohibited,” he says.
His neighbour’s residence was become a army publish. “They sat there with their weapons pointing on the street, treating us all as suspects,” he recollects.
A lot of the fighters did not even converse Arabic, he says. “They had been Afghans, Iranians, Hezbollah. However we referred to all of them as Iranians as a result of Iran was controlling them.”
Abdullah’s spouse Jourieh says she is pleased that the “Iranian militias” have left, however nonetheless remembers the “hectic” second earlier than their withdrawal. She had thought they might be trapped in crossfire as Iran-backed teams had been fortifying their positions and on the brink of combat, however then “they only vanished in a couple of hours”.
“This was an occupation. Iranian occupation,” says Abdo who, like others, has simply returned right here along with his household after 10 years. His home had additionally turn out to be a army base.
I noticed this anger in the direction of Iran and a softer perspective in the direction of Russia in lots of conversations with Syrians.
I requested Rabbat, the HTS fighter, why this was.
“Russians had been dropping bombs from the sky and aside from that, they had been of their bases whereas Iranians and their militias had been on the bottom interacting. Individuals had been feeling their presence, and plenty of weren’t pleased with it,” he defined.
This sense is mirrored in Syria’s new rulers’ coverage in the direction of Iran.
The brand new authorities have put a ban on Iranian nationals, alongside Israelis, getting into Syria. However there isn’t any such ban towards Russians.
Iran’s embassy, which was stormed by indignant protesters after the autumn of the regime, stays closed.
The response of Iranian officers in the direction of developments in Syria has been contradictory.
Whereas supreme chief Ali Khamenei known as on “Syrian youths” to “resist” those that “have introduced instability” to Syria, Iran’s overseas ministry has taken a extra balanced view.
It says the nation “backs any authorities supported by the Syrian folks”.
In one among his first interviews, Syria’s new chief Sharaa described their victory over Assad as an “finish of the Iranian undertaking”. However he hasn’t dominated out having a “balanced” relationship with Tehran.
For the second, although, Iran shouldn’t be welcome in Syria. After years of increasing its army presence, every part Tehran constructed is now in ruins, each on the battlefield and, it appears, within the eyes of a big a part of Syria’s public.
Again on the deserted base, Iran’s army growth was nonetheless beneath manner even within the final days. Subsequent to the camp had been extra tunnels beneath building, apparently the beginnings of a discipline hospital. The cement on the partitions was nonetheless moist and the paint recent.
However left behind now could be proof of a short combat – a couple of bullet shells and a army uniform lined with blood.
