'Shi'ite militias'
This is quite ironic with a couple of substitutions in the last paragraph.
" It certainly makes sense for Iran to perpetuate the idea that militant opposition to their occupation of Syria was really the work of external powers. It is not just good propaganda, but enjoys a neat fit with the state-centric discourses of international relations in which the empire's elites are trained. However, this is merely to underline a point which should occur to journalists far more often than it does: since when was 'according to Tehran' not the fastest way to undermine the integrity of any sentence in print?"