![Iranian soldiers have been training Syrian militias since 2012 [Atta Kenare/AFP Photo]](/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2017/10/22/5a7d29401ee84a42acdd4a70722dd7f8_18.jpg "FSA rebels: We would have won if not for Iran")
In the summer of 2012, the leading commanders of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) were confident that momentum was with them.
A bomb blast deep inside central Damascus had just taken out four senior commanders of the Syrian army, including the country's defence minister, Dawoud Rajiha, and his deputy, Assef Shawkat, who was also President Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law.
The explosion, believed to have been carried out by an insider sympathetic to the opposition cause, gave hope to rebels that it was only a matter of time before Assad met a similar fate.
That hope was bolstered by successes on the battlefield, as ragtag groups of fighters coalesced into more effective armed groups, large swaths of the country started to come into rebel control.
Fateh Hassoun, who defected from the Syrian army and commanded FSA troops in Homs at the time, told Al Jazeera he felt optimistic that forces loyal to Assad would not be able to withstand the burgeoning uprising.
"There was widespread defection among the Syrian officer corps, especially in the middle ranks, such as lieutenants and colonels, who formed the backbone of the Syrian army," Hassoun recalled, adding the army had been further weakened by government purges of officers.
He explained Syrian forces had been concentrated in the southwest of the country, in a posture aimed at deterring the threat from Israel.
It was a fact many defected officers were aware of and one that they would use to their advantage as they encroached on major Syrian population centres.
The successes, however, had not gone unnoticed by Syria's close allies, Iran and the Lebanese armed group, Hezbollah, both of which upped their involvement in the conflict, stemming the rate of rebel advances.
Hassoun said: "After the Iranian and Hezbollah intervention, the regime started making gains on the ground, especially in the central regions of Homs and Hama.
"Despite the Iranian intervention, the regime and its allies could not win the war, but they were successful in protecting the capital, Damascus, by besieging and keeping the opposition on the periphery of the city," he added.
Fellow FSA official, Bashar al-Zoubi, who commands the rebel umbrella group's southern front claimed the Syrian Army was only operating at a quarter of its full strength until the Iranians intervened.
