Iran: "Retired" elite soldiers among 48 hostages held by Syria rebels

This image made from a video released by the Baraa Brigades purports to show Free Syrian Army soldiers guarding a group of Iranians abducted a day earlier in Damascus, Syria.

/ Youtube

(CBS News) - The State Department tells CBS News it believes Syrian rebels' claims that 48 Iranians they are holding hostage are members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard military unit.

Iran has flatly denied the claim that the hostages are military personnel, insisting they are all civilians who were in Syria to visit the Sayyida Zainab shrine, south of Damascus, when they were abducted. The shrine has been frequented by Shiite Muslim pilgrims in the past, including many from Iran.

On Wednesday, however, Iran's foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted by the Islamic Republic's government-controlled media as saying, "some retired individuals from the Guards and army" were among those being held.

"After some time in which pilgrims from Iran were not being dispatched to Syria... we took steps to send retired forces from various organizations," he was quoted as saying by Iran's state news agency and other state-run media. "Some retired individuals from the Guards and army were dispatched to Syria to make a pilgrimage."

Salehi continued to reject claims that the hostages were playing an active military role.

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A day before admitting the hostages' links to the elite Iranian military unit, Salehi sent a formal letter to United Nations Secretary-General, to "seek the cooperation and the good offices of Your Excellency for securing the release of these hostages."

Rebels took the Iranians hostage recently, claiming they are members of the IRGC. In a video published on Sunday, Capt. Abdul Nasser Shumayr of the Free Syrian Army's al-Bara Brigade said three of the captives had been killed in "fierce shelling" by security forces, and he threatened to execute the rest if the bombardment continued.

He later told al-Jazeera that his brigade had "intelligence information" and "documents" showing that the group belonged to the Revolutionary Guards and had come to Syria to "serve the regime".

Sending Iranian fighters into the country would change the dynamic of the conflict and provide fertile ground for a proxy war between Iran - a fervent backer of the Assad regime - and the majority-Sunni Muslim nations in the Middle East which have been the rebels' primary benefactors with weapons shipments and other support.

CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata, who spent last week with rebel fighters in Aleppo province, says the notion of Iranian fighters being inside Syria and doing the regime's bidding is an absolute obsession among the rebels.

"They're not only convinced of Iranian involvement, they're actively pursuing Iranians," says D'Agata.

Syrian President Bashar Assad meets with senior Iranian envoy Saeed Jalili in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 7, 2012.

/ AP/SANA

The Obama administration believes Iran is "intensifying" its relationship with Syria, and there is tangible evidence for U.S. leaders to point to.

Assad met a senior Iranian envoy in Damascus on Wednesday and the two men spoke openly of their countries' "strategic cooperation relationship" and "attempts by some Western countries and their allies to strike at the axis of resistance by targeting Syria and supporting terrorism there."

The Iranian envoy, Saeed Jalili, told Assad that, "Iran will absolutely not allow the axis of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be a main pillar, to be broken," according to Syria's state-run news agency.

Speaking during a state visit to South Africa on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the U.S. is concerned that the Syrian rebellion is being exploited by those who are "sending in proxies."

[westerng]

lol look at all these murderous, blood thirsty americans spewing this filth about how kidnapped Iranians must die, even though they are the cowards dropping bombs from drones and giving the same terrorists that bombed them ten years ago more weapons. Go on and keep spreading the empire thinner and thinner, your white trash ways wont make up for your stupidity and ignorance when your economy collapses taking the rest of what little the baby boomers generation has left hahahah and us 20+'s, do you really think were going to help you, take another bullet for you, get f'd up and turn out like your viet war vets? h e double hockey sticks no

[WarIsNoSolution]

USA:
Don't meddle in other countries domestic affairs!
Don't support the terrorists in Syria!
Don't control the media and keep world public blind!
Don't help Saudi Arabia spread the deadly Wahhabism in the world!
Don't make the world an unpleasant place for people!

[technocoffee]

USA-STAY THE HELL OUT of it if you don't like it (we need walls to keep people out, unlike Muslim countries who's people have flooded the West, trying to GET AWAY from their basket case culture & economies.) DON'T ADAPT WESTERN/AMERICAN WAYS if you hate us-no jeans, tee shirts, Western music/films, Apple Products, electricity or phone-our inventions. DON'T MESS WITH US and we WON'T drone bomb your sorry a--es...

[netjunkie1]

I just interested to hear what is being done to them for interrogation.

[Void-Master]

Retired elite soldiers... retired, I tell ya. Yeah, just some innocent pilgrims out for a stroll in a war zone; happens all the time. Hell, American college students do it all the time.

[CarltonLoeber]

President Obama .. do you not think the Syrian people are worthy of freedom .. ? Are they not possessed of the inalienable rights that the American founders proclaimed .. these are humans Mr. President . .I have been to Syrian myself and have never met a better people .. I am disgusted to watch the inaction of the White House ..

President Obama is to blame.. too much a coward to do anything during the re-election .. so he should agree with Romney to come together and make a joint announcement that they both agree that the US should take military action and lead with air power .. John McCain will give them guidance if the President can't figure out what to do ..

President Obama should have acted to stop the murder more than 400 days ago .. by sending in drones for the dictator's palaces in Damascus .. instead President Obama has descended into ignominious cowardice ..

Did the Kremlin wait to get UN approval when they went sent tanks into Georgia in 2008 ? Why is President Obama handcuffed by the Kremlin ? we can only say that it is because he does not want to save the Syrians .. he does not want to send in drones .. he does not want to risk re-election chances and thinks he can shirk his responsibility as leader of the free world ..

Who does President Obama and the West depend on the save the Syrian children ? The same man who the US depended to save the Rwandan and Bosnian children ..

Syrian authorities are systematically detaining and torturing children, the United Nations' human rights chief, Navi Pillay, has told the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-175411...

President Obama has allowed this to happen .. he has given free rein to the dictators in Damascus and abandoned the Syrian people .. he said the right things when he lead the charge against Qaddafi .. but has let his re-election rule his moral sense on Syria ..

It is disgraceful cowardice unbecoming of the leader of the home of the brave .. He could have shot back at the Damascus dictators 487 days ago when they started shooting innocent protesters .. He could have sent cruise missiles and drones to attack the palace of the dictator and his tanks and artillery .. He and the other leaders of the West meekly bow to the Kremlin and Chinese dictators .. instead they only strain their intelligence coming up with new words to say how horrible are the Syrian dictators' atrocities ..

March 28, 2011, President Obama said .. "when people were being brutalized in Bosnia in the 1990s, it took the international community more than a year to intervene with air power to protect civilians." www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/03/28/president-obama-s-speech-libya

"To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are," (Except in an election year?)

"Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different," (Except in an election year?)

2011: "And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action." 2012: Coward

[KnowerseekerReturns]

Ha ha... like Romney would care. Or GW, for that matter.

[westerly1]

When the American military says they are ex military or retired military in a foreign country, it usually means they are CIA operatives. I suspect the same is true for the Iranians captured.

[newkungfu]

Makes perfect sense to me. Iranian intel operatives. Not sure what planet kkltr is from..

[nomorelibs]

Maybe he's Iranian.

[Calltwoarms]

Indeed, the hostages being held are Revolutionary Guard elite forces. Pity, pity I say and if they're executed boo hoo. Iran and Syria make up the Axis of Evil not resistance. Fortunately the rebels caught them with evidence which must be presented to a neutral party to be certified.

Iran wants a proxy war and now they'll get one. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan are probably devising and scheming a plan to counteract the Iranians support for Assad's regime.

[foo8259]

Yeah, I had to laugh at "the axis of resistance" statement: resistance against whom?

[quark01]

I guess I should feel bad, but I remember when Iran held our hostages... This situation just tickles me to no end! Ain't so cool when it is your own people, is it?