Seven Ways Iran Spends its Money in the Syrian War

“Get out of Syria! Think about our plight!” This was one of the slogans canted during last December’s nationwide protests in more than 100 Iranian cities.

Seven years ago when Iran started getting involved in the Syrian conflict the narrative promoted by the authorities was that Iran was going there to protect “the Shi’ite holy shrines” against attacks by “Sunni extremists”, a defensive strategy, and would not become involved in the broader struggle for power between regime leader Bashar al-Assad and his opponents. Falling victim to mission creep, however, Iran was quickly re-cast as the chief guarantor of the survival of the regime, an objective labeled as “vital” for Iran’s own security.

Russia’s involvement two years after the Syrian conflict had started, and President Vladimir Putin’s quick emergence as the key setter of agenda in Syria, punctured the myth of Iran as the key player in Syria. That, in turn, has inspired complaints, at first sotto voce, but more recently openly, about the reasons for what Islamic Majlis member Mahmoud Sadeqi in Tehran has dubbed “our Syrian adventure.”

President Hassan Rouhani has tried to re-tell the Syrian story by claiming that Iran was showing a high degree of altruism by helping “our Syrian brothers in need.”

“Even in harsh circumstances we cut our own needs in order to help our Syrian brothers,” he said last month.

With the high number of human losses sustained by Iran and “allies” including Lebanese, Pakistani and Afghan mercenaries admitted officially, the question that people now ask is focused on the financial cost of “our Syrian adventure.”

Iran’s financial commitments in Syria could be divided into seven categories.

The first consists of the value of arms and other military materiel supplied by Iran to forces supporting Assad. These include Iranian-made surface-to-surface missiles modeled on the Chinese Silkworms originally developed for use at sea. Another major item consists of armored cars of which Iran is reported to have delivered over 400 to replace losses sustained by Assad’s elite 4th Armored Division. According to estimates by researchers in Iran, Iran has also supplied Assad with over 500 pieces of Russian-made heavy artillery for use against urban centers.

Because of many of the arms supplied to Syria come from Iran’s own stocks, often dating back to years, it is hard to put a price on them. It is even possible that Iran has tried to recycle its old arms as part of a broader plan to renew its arsenal of weapons.

However, some analysts, including Reza Saberi, claim that arms supplied by Iran could be valued at around $1.2 billion.

The second item on Iran’s expenses’ list in Syria consists of delivery of oil and petroleum products to Assad forces. This is done in the context of a credit line that Iran has opened for Syria. The most credible figure cited by the Iranian media puts the size of that “line” at between $2-3 billion a year. The total “credit line” allows for up to $6 billion a year and includes food and medical supplies which Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif has put at around $2.5 billion a year.

The third item in Iran’s “Syria expenses” list consists of what the central Bank of Iran calls “transfer funds”. This means Iran exporting a certain quantity of its own oil on behalf of Syria with the understanding that Syria will repay in due course in an interest-free arrangement.

According to Jesse Shahin, spokesman for the office of Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations’ Special emissary on Syria, the “transfer funds” amounts to Iran giving the Assad regime an average of $6 billion a year, sums largely spent on paying civil servants and the forces still more or less loyal to the regime.

The fourth item in Iran’s expenses consists of “emergency funds” made in 2012 and 2103. According to Nadim Shehadah, professor at the Tufts University in the US, cited by BBC researcher Ali Qadimi, that amounted to $14-15 billion.

Tehran sources say the “emergency funds” were disbursed with the help of Austrian and Italian private banks over 30 months in tranches of $300 to $1.2 billion.

The fifth item of Iranian expense consist of funds needed to maintain several paramilitary forces made up of “volunteers for martyrdom” from Afghanistan, Pakistan and, in much smaller numbers, Iraq. The umbrella organ for these forces is the so-called Fatemiyoun Division, formerly a brigade, which was built up to 12,000 men in 2016.

At the time, General Qasem Soleimani, Commander of the Quds Corps, the organ that is supposed to coordinate Iranian operations in Syria, claimed that “volunteers for martyrdom” received no more than $100 a month in cash.

However, several Majlis members, speaking on condition of anonymity, claim that the payment is closer to $1,000 a month as Quds Corps also pays “subsistence pay” to families of the “volunteers for martyrdom.” All in all, the Fatemiyoun Division and ancillaries cost Iran around $1 billion a year. That does not include the $800 million paid annually to the Lebanese branch of “Hezbollah” led by Hassan Nasrallah.

A sixth source of income to finance the war on Assad’s side is provided by what Tehran terms bilateral trade. Much of this, of course, is more in the nature of transit trade with Iranian companies selling Syria’s oil and gas and phosphate to third countries. According to General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a military adviser to “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, in addition to that trade Iran has won a major mobile phone contract in Syria with the prospect of creating a major new source of income to finance the war.

A major source of income for Assad consisted of money spent by over 1.2 million Iranian pilgrims, who visited Syria each year prior to 2011. However, the flow of pilgrims has almost completely dried up with Iranians preferring to visit “holy shrines” in Iraq. Meanwhile, some of the infrastructure, including over 100 hotels, built with Iranian money have either been badly damaged or left abandoned in previously peaceful areas turned into battlefields.

According to some studies, Iran’s losses on that score could be put at over $2 billion as much of the infrastructure may no longer be recoverable.

A seventh source item of cost for the Syrian war is represented by what Iran spends on keeping around 13,000 of its own troops, often presented as advisers or technicians, in Syria. No official figures are available. But if Iranian troops in Syria receive the same treatment as comparable military ranks inside Iran itself the annual cost could be around $3 billion in salaries and upkeep, not taking into account the cost of weapons and materiel used. The most conservative estimate would see Iran spending an average of $12.7 billion a year in Syria of which less than $2 billion may be recovered in trade deals using Syrian energy and raw material.

According to Tehran sources, part of the funds needed is raised through a special one per cent tariff imposed on all car imports in Iran with the proceeds credited to a special “Resistance Account” controlled by the office of the “Supreme Guide”.

Another source of funds is provided by “voluntary donations” supposedly for the defense or rebuilding of “shrines ”. Under that scheme 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces are assigned quotas to fulfill by raising funds from local businesses and through donations collected at mosques and bazaars. Provinces with a Sunnis majority are excluded from the scheme. As these “donations” are collected by local Friday prayer leaders, it is hard to know what percentage is actually transferred to the central fund and how much is kept by the involved clerics themselves.

Tehran University Professor Sadeq Ziba-Kalam recently invited the leadership in Tehran to review involvement in Syria. He was rewarded with a prison sentence of 18 months.

Nevertheless, many Iranians are beginning to realize that Syria is a costly war, both in terms of human losses and financial burden. And that, some analysts, believe is already encouraging a re-think of what some Iranians regard as a losing strategy.

Suleiman Khalil was harvesting olives in a Syrian orchard with two friends four months ago, unaware the soil beneath them still hid deadly remnants of war.

The trio suddenly noticed a visible mine lying on the ground. Panicked, Khalil and his friends tried to leave, but he stepped on a land mine and it exploded. His friends, terrified, ran to find an ambulance, but Khalil, 21, thought they had abandoned him.

"I started crawling, then the second land mine exploded," Khalil told The Associated Press. "At first, I thought I'd died. I didn’t think I would survive this."

Khalil’s left leg was badly wounded in the first explosion, while his right leg was blown off from above the knee in the second. He used his shirt to tourniquet the stump and screamed for help until a soldier nearby heard him and rushed for his aid.

"There were days I didn’t want to live anymore," Khalil said, sitting on a thin mattress, his amputated leg still wrapped in a white cloth four months after the incident. Khalil, who is from the village of Qaminas, in the southern part of Syria’s Idlib province, is engaged and dreams of a prosthetic limb so he can return to work and support his family again.

While the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war came to an end with the fall of Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8, war remnants continue to kill and maim. Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8, according to INSO, an international organization which coordinates safety for aid workers.

Mines and explosive remnants — widely used since 2011 by Syrian government forces, its allies, and armed opposition groups — have contaminated vast areas, many of which only became accessible after the Assad government’s collapse, leading to a surge in the number of land mine casualties, according to a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.

‘It will take ages to clear them all’

Prior to Dec. 8, land mines and explosive remnants of war also frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.

"Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods, and land will be injured and killed," said Richard Weir, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW.

Experts estimate that tens of thousands of land mines remain buried across Syria, particularly in former front-line regions like rural Idlib.

"We don’t even have an exact number," said Ahmad Jomaa, a member of a demining unit under Syria's defense ministry. "It will take ages to clear them all."

Jomaa spoke while scanning farmland in a rural area east of Maarrat al-Numan with a handheld detector, pointing at a visible anti-personnel mine nestled in dry soil.

"This one can take off a leg," he said. "We have to detonate it manually."

Psychological trauma and broader harm

Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard. Days earlier a tractor exploded nearby, severely injuring several farm workers, Jomaa said. "Most of the mines here are meant for individuals and light vehicles, like the ones used by farmers," he said.

Jomaa’s demining team began dismantling the mines immediately after the previous government was ousted. But their work comes at a steep cost.

"We’ve had 15 to 20 (deminers) lose limbs, and around a dozen of our brothers were killed doing this job," he said. Advanced scanners, needed to detect buried or improvised devices, are in short supply, he said. Many land mines are still visible to the naked eye, but others are more sophisticated and harder to detect.

Land mines not only kill and maim but also cause long-term psychological trauma and broader harm, such as displacement, loss of property, and reduced access to essential services, HRW says.

The rights group has urged the transitional government to establish a civilian-led mine action authority in coordination with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to streamline and expand demining efforts.

Syria's military under the Assad government laid explosives years ago to deter opposition fighters. Even after the government seized nearby territories, it made little effort to clear the mines it left behind.

‘Every day someone is dying’

Standing before his brother’s grave, Salah Sweid holds up a photo on his phone of Mohammad, smiling behind a pile of dismantled mines. "My mother, like any other mother would do, warned him against going," Salah said. "But he told them, ‘If I don’t go and others don’t go, who will? Every day someone is dying.’"

Mohammad was 39 when he died on Jan. 12 while demining in a village in Idlib. A former Syrian Republican Guard member trained in planting and dismantling mines, he later joined the opposition during the uprising, scavenging weapon debris to make arms.

He worked with Turkish units in Azaz, a city in northwest Syria, using advanced equipment, but on the day he died, he was on his own. As he defused one mine, another hidden beneath it detonated.

After Assad’s ouster, mines littered his village in rural Idlib. He had begun volunteering to clear them — often without proper equipment — responding to residents’ pleas for help, even on holidays when his demining team was off duty, his brother said.

For every mine cleared by people like Mohammad, many more remain.

In a nearby village, Jalal al-Maarouf, 22, was tending to his goats three days after the Assad government’s collapse when he stepped on a mine. Fellow shepherds rushed him to a hospital, where doctors amputated his left leg.

He has added his name to a waiting list for a prosthetic, "but there’s nothing so far," he said from his home, gently running a hand over the smooth edge of his stump. "As you can see, I can’t walk." The cost of a prosthetic limb is in excess of $3,000 and far beyond his means.

Seven Ways Iran Spends its Money in the Syrian War