With people’s anger towards the regime reaching a boiling point and the security forces either reluctant or unable to suppress the protests, the regime decided to resort to proxy forces.
Alireza Tivasolii, A Qom seminary graduate and commander of the Fatemiyoun Brigade killed in Syria, with Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force (File)
Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran’s clerical establishment has used religious organizations to expand its clout abroad.
Key among them is the Al-Mustafa International University, a network of religious seminaries based in the Shi’ite holy city of Qom that has branches in some 50 countries.
The university claims to teach Shi’ite Muslim theology, Islamic science, and Iran’s national language, Persian, to tens of thousands of foreign students across Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America.
In a
statement on December 9, the university said it promoted peace, friendship, and brotherhood among nations and slammed the U.S. decision as hegemonic. High-Value Individuals
Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington who has closely monitored IRGC activity in Syria, said that, according to his database from January 2012 to December 2020, 3,059 Iranian and allied foreign fighters were killed in combat in Syria.
Alfoneh says of those, only three were students or graduates of the Al-Mustafa International University known as Jamiat al-Mostafa University in Iran. This indicates that Jamiat al-Mostafa has never served as the primary recruitment ground for the IRGC s war effort in Syria, he says.