Iran has spent up to $100 billion in the past five years financing operations in Syria that were instrumental in keeping President Bashar Assad in power, according to a book on the hard-line Islamic theocracy’s vast business holdings and wealth.
The e-book “Iran: The Rise of the Revolutionary Guards’ Financial Empire” estimates that the Islamic republic has paid nearly $100 million a year in salaries to a grab bag of mercenaries it sent to Syria under the direction of the notorious Quds force.
Iran is meddling in Syria as the Shiite-dominated regime directs the largest arms buildup in its history, focusing on new missiles and ways to deploy forces into regional conflicts, such as Syria’s civil war.
The e-book was released Wednesday by the Islamic republic’s largest internal dissident group — the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which includes the operational People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK).
The study has two purposes. The first is to document a major corporate and money grab by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a military branch that exports terrorism and tenaciously protects all aspects of the mullahs’ rule over 79 million people.
