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Iran and Hizbullah Build Militia Networks in Syria in Event that Assad Falls
(Washington Post) Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick - Iran and Hizbullah, its Lebanese proxy, are building a network of militias inside Syria to protect their interests in the event that President Assad's government falls. A senior Obama administration official sited Iranian claims that Tehran was backing as many as 50,000 militiamen in Syria. "It's a big operation....The immediate intention seems to be to support the Syrian regime. But it's important for Iran to have a force in Syria that is reliable and can be counted on." "Syria is basically disintegrating as a nation, similar to how Lebanon disintegrated in the '70s to ethnic components, and as Iraq did," said Paul Salem, director of the Beirut-based Mideast Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's going to be very hard to put Syria the nation back together."