Iran 

IRGC and Hezbollah Salaries Revealed

In an article on Friday, The Times revealed that it had seen documents that suggest that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) soldiers receive, on average, $300 a month, earning about half the salary of a computer programmer in Iran and less than a schoolteacher. However, the IRGC’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon expended $1,300 per month. This discrepancy, which could also be explained by Hezbollah’s revenue not deriving solely from the Islamic Republic and based on a host of illicit involvement in industries, has added to the “doubt and confusion” that some guardsmen feel as they have quashed anti-regime protests in Iran.  

Israel and the Palestinian Territories 

Terror Attack in Jerusalem 

A six-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man were murdered, and five others were wounded in a car-ramming terror attack near East Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood on Friday. The culprit was Hussein Qaraqa, an Israeli citizen and resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. A senior Israeli official said the attacker appeared to have been mentally ill and was discharged from a psychiatric hospital in northern Israel days ago. Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas praised the attack but did not claim responsibility. Hamas called the event “a heroic response to the crimes of the occupation.”  

Syria 

Hezbollah, Iran Send Aid to Quake-Stricken Syria, Israel Warns Against Smuggling in Arms 

Iran and several of its proxy militias, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq, have announced that they will send aid to victims of the earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey. 

According to Hezbollah’s Al-Ahed News, the group’s Mahdi scouts organized a fundraiser for the victims of the quakes, and convoys of buses carrying aid from Hezbollah in Lebanon have already begun arriving in Syria. Additionally, Al-Ahed claimed its reporters confirmed the arrival of aid from the PMF militias in Iraq to Syria’s victims.  

Meanwhile, Israel issued a warning to Iran and Hezbollah against attempting to use the guise of humanitarian aid to smuggle weapons to Syria. An Israeli military official told Saudi newspaper Elaph that Israel possessed information that Iran would exploit the humanitarian crisis in Syria and send weapons and military equipment to Hezbollah that would help the group further entrench itself in Syria, but disguised as humanitarian aid. The military official said that Israel had intensified its reconnaissance and intelligence gathering operations in Syria in recent days to monitor the content of the Iranian aid being sent to Syria’s earthquake victims.  

The Israeli military official explained to Elaph that, in the past, Iran had sent military equipment and weapons disguised as food or other aid, and that Israel struck these convoys after they had crossed from Iraq into Syria. He stressed that Israel would again target any Iranian convoys, including those disguised as humanitarian aid, if they were carrying weapons into Syria. In fact, one of the planes Iran used to ship relief was from Qeshm Fars Air, a U.S.-sanctioned airline linked to the IRGC’s Quds Force, which has previously smuggled arms to Syria.  

Reinforcing these concerns, the Commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Esmail Ghaani, made a public appearance in Aleppo and Latakia. He was pictured trying to assist with relief efforts. Ghaani’s regional travels are usually clandestine, with footage occasionally surfacing from his trips. But the Iranian system likely sought to use his presence to promote the regime’s soft power and ideological expansion.

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