Iran did not hold Assad – News

When the Syrian rebels took control of Aleppo and Hama in the middle of the week, they were shocked in Tehran. The Syrian army did not defend itself. Although Tehran loudly assured that its support for Bashar Assad continues and talked about sending Shiite Iraqi militias, it was increasingly aware that it probably did not have enough forces to stop the rapid advance of the rebels, The New York Times wrote.

At the end of the working week, some senior Iranian officials already indicated that the fall of Bashar Assad is inevitable, which means rewriting the situation in the area. “The possible fall of the Syrian government into the hands of Islamist extremists could be one of the most significant events in the history of the Middle East,” former Iranian vice president and cleric Mohammad ali Abtahi said on the X network. He pointed out that the Shiite resistance movement in the area may be left without support: “Israel may become the dominant force.”

Even Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who visited Damascus, Baghdad and Qatar in the last week, retreated from promoting aid to Syria when he said that the fate of Assad should be left to “God’s will”. A former Iranian fighter in Syria, Soheil Karimi, who became an expert on politics in the area, denied the words of the Iranian foreign minister promising support for Assad: “The reality in the field does not correspond to what he says. Our guys are not on the battlefield in Syria now. They weren’t allowed to.’

Iran gradually stopped engaging. An internal report of a member of the Revolutionary Guards, seen by The New York Times, assesses the situation as “unbelievable and strange”. “It is as if Iran accepted the fall of Assad and lost the will to resist,” the text reads.

Iran’s state television also changed its vocabulary, no longer referring to the Sunni rebels as “infidel terrorists” but as “armed groups” and mentioned that they treat minorities well.

Three Iranian officials told the newspaper that the Hajjat ​​Tahrir al-Sham group had sent a diplomatic cable to Tehran. It promised to protect religious buildings and sites important to Shiites, while asking Iran not to send its combat forces into the country. Iran, on the other hand, asked that the group allow the smooth withdrawal of its forces from Syria and protect Shiite holy places and temples.

Iranian government adviser Mehdi Rahmati said that Iran’s entry into these fights would require enormous logistical and financial resources: “These conditions are not realistic now.” He also pointed out that Syria and Lebanon were like Iran’s wings that had been clipped. According to him, it is also impossible to imagine that one could exist without the other.

Afshon Ostovar, an expert on Iran’s armed forces at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, warned that backing Assad could lead “Iran to a losing battle.” Iran realizes that after Donald Trump takes office, American pressure on the country will increase. The weakening of Iran may lead to the fact that it will not be perceived as such a threat, but at the same time it means that Tehran has had to limit its ambitions and abandon the positions it has built up over many years and decades.