IRGC Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari. Photo: Wikipedia.

A senior Iranian military official said that Tehran has succeeded in recruiting thousands of proxy fighters, semi-official Fars News Agency reported on Tuesday.

Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that recent sectarian conflicts have increased the “revolutionary awareness” of the Middle East’s Shia youth. As a result, he claimed, Iran has been able to recruit nearly 200,000 fighters from across the region – including in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan – to carry out its proxy wars.

Jafari also said he hopes to continue enlisting Iranian and Shia youth in the service of the Islamic Republic, and in the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary ideology.