Iran Is Spending Billions Trying To Prop Up The Syrian Government

Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Syrian President Assad

Eli Lake, Bloomberg: Iran Spends Billions to Prop Up Assad

Iran is spending billions of dollars a year to prop up the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, according to the U.N.'s envoy to Syria and other outside experts. These estimates are far higher than what the Barack Obama administration, busy negotiating a nuclear deal with the Tehran government, has implied Iran spends on its policy to destabilize the Middle East.

On Monday, a spokeswoman for the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told me that the envoy estimates Iran spends $6 billion annually on Assad's government. Other experts I spoke to put the number even higher. Nadim Shehadi, the director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University, said his research shows that Iran spent between $14 and $15 billion in military and economic aid to the Damascus regime in 2012 and 2013, even though Iran's banks and businesses were cut off from the international financial system.

WNU Editor: With the Syrian regime now suffering steady losses as the various Syrian rebel groups start to coordinate their military offenses .... the Iranian regime is now faced with the real possibility that as costly as their support of Assad has been, it is about to get even more expensive.