This is a surprising turn of events. A number of Western media outlets reported this fall that Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force, and Russia's defense ministry had negotiated an infusion of Iranian forces into Syria over the summer, shortly after the conclusion of the nuclear negotiations between Iran and six other world powers. That surge was supposed to change the tide of the Syrian war that the dictator Bashar al-Assad was losing, as more of his territory fell to a coalition of rebels supported by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others.
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