The Washington Post has reported that Iran trained militias from the separatist Polisario Front, which is based in Algeria. The report adds that Syria’s newly formed security forces arrested hundreds of these fighters inside Syrian territory, where they had been fighting alongside the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The report, published on Saturday, sheds light on the “proxy groups” that Iran has either founded or supported through training and arms, particularly in Syria. In that country, Iran established a presence through groups such as Hezbollah and other militias that served the interests of the Assad regime or are currently being used to destabilize the new transitional government.
According to the report, the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime revealed the vast scale of Iran-backed militias. Among them is the Polisario Front, “a militant group fighting for the independence of the Western Sahara from Morocco”.
Citing regional officials and a third European official, the report notes that following the regime’s fall, Syria’s new security forces “arrested hundreds” of Polisario militia members within Syrian territory. This corroborates several earlier reports that had previously pointed to such activity.
It’s worth noting that the Atlantic Council, a U.S.-based think tank, had earlier published a report stating that the fall of the Assad regime exposed ties between the regime, the Polisario Front, and Iran. Documents and evidence have surfaced confirming this connection, the Council noted, while recalling that Morocco had warned as far back as 2018 about Iranian support for the Polisario against Moroccan interests.
The same report from the Atlantic Council further emphasized that the threat posed by Iranian expansionism was one of the key reasons behind the growing cooperation between Morocco and Israel. The report also cited numerous accounts of increasing Iranian involvement in the Western Sahara issue, including Iran supplying the Polisario with combat drones, surface-to-air missiles, and HM-16 mortars, in addition to providing military training—developments that have emboldened the separatist group.
As a consequence, the Council added, Polisario forces began shelling towns within Moroccan-administered areas in the Sahara—specifically in Smara and Mahbes—coinciding with the war in Gaza. These acts, the report notes, are alarming violations of the ceasefire agreement signed in September 1991.
In this context, the Atlantic Council highlighted how the fall of the Assad regime revealed the depth of the ties between the Polisario Front and Iran, with Syria acting as an intermediary. Amid the chaos following the collapse of Damascus, an unverified document reportedly surfaced, revealing correspondence between Syria’s Ministry of Defense and the self-declared “Sahrawi Republic” about training 120 Polisario soldiers in armed combat at Iran’s request.
Additionally, during the Syrian opposition’s control over Aleppo in the north, at least thirty Sahrawi mercenaries were reportedly captured. Fahd Al-Masri, head of the Syrian National Salvation Front, further disclosed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard deployed approximately 200 Polisario fighters over the past three years to Al-Thaala military airport, the Sweida military base, and the Daraa countryside.
