Brigade General Fereydoun Mohammadi Saghaei as seen in a photo released by tehrannews.ir
On July 4, Israeli independent Israeli intelligence analyst Ronen Solomon, who runs the Intelli Times blog, identified Brigade General Fereydoun Mohammadi Saghaei as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer in charge of deploying advanced Iranian air-defense systems in Syria.
The identity of the senior officer was first hinted at in a report by al-Arabiya on July 1. Solomon clarified that the name the UAE-bases news channel reported at the time, Farid Muhammad Thaqa’I, was slightly incorrect.
The Israeli analyst said that he was able to confirm the report and the correct name of the IRGC officer with Western intelligence sources.
Brig. Gen. Saghaei, who serves as the deputy coordinator of the IRGC’s Aerospace Force, visited the Syrian capital, Damascus, on more than one occasions in the last few months to coordinate the deployment of Iranian air-defense systems in the country, according to al-Arabiya.
The deployment of these systems is a part of a secret Iranian-Syrian military project that is meant to protect IRGC assets in Syria from Israel’s repeated aerial attacks.
The alleged project was used to justify the July 2 Israeli airstrikes on the costal Syrian governorate of Tartus. The airstrikes destroyed two small poultry farms in the outskirts of the town of the al-Hamidiyah. The Israeli media claimed that “game changing” Iranian air-defense systems were hidden there.
The claims made by al-Arabiya and the Israeli media are yet to be verified. The lack of any evidence rises some serious doubts about these claims, which may be nothing but a propaganda stunt meant to justify Israeli attacks on Syria.
