Syrian war: Iraqi fighters swell Iran 'foreign legion'
Hezbollah's deployment of thousands of its fighters in Syria's civil war to aid the Iranian-backed Damascus regime has been widely criticized because it intensified the sectarian nature of the 28-month-old conflict that's becoming a template for a regional conflagration. But the largely overlooked presence in Syria of growing numbers of Iraqi Shiites, battle-hardened veterans of Iranian-backed militias that fought the Americans, underlines how Tehran is forming a "foreign legion" that's spreading across the troubled region. As the war drags on, Iran is reported to be taking an increasingly active role on the ground through the elite covert action wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the al-Quds Force. This organized, trained and armed Iraq Shiite groups to fight Americans during their eight-year occupation of Iraq that ended in December 2011. There have been constant reports that units of the al-Quds Force are in action in Syria.
