Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says ´ash rising from flames´ of crisis caused by any military campaign against Assad ´would definitely envelop Zionist regime´

Any crisis caused by military intervention in Syria would "envelop the Zionist regime," Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said Wednesday.

According to the Tehran Times, Larijani was referring to calls by "certain US officials" for a military campaign against President Bashar Assad´s regime following the recent massacre of civilians, many of them children, in the town of Houla.

"US military officials probably have a poor understanding of themselves and regional issues because Syria is in no way similar to Libya, and (the effects of) creating another Benghazi in Syria would spread to Palestine, and ash rising from the flames would definitely envelop the Zionist regime,” Larijani was quoted by the Tehran Times as saying during a speech in parliament.

“It seems that the United States and the West are seeking to pave the way for a new crisis,” he added.

Larijani told parliament that American officials "should be aware of (the nature of) their dangerous game. Isn’t it necessary that they take measures in response to the military occupation of Bahrain? The question is why they are preventing the reform plan in Syria from moving forward."

According to the parliament speaker, "Certain reactionaries in the region take pride in the fact that they have used money and weapons to destroy and incite a civil war in Syria.”

in his speech, Larijani stated that the "Majlis (the Iranian parliament) supports democratic reforms in Syria that will help uphold the people’s rights, condemns terrorist actions and opportunistic interference by certain countries in Syria as well as the hawkish and unwise messages of the United States, and warns that it may seem easy to embark on such an act of adventurism, but it will definitely be difficult to end it.”

According to the Interfax news agency, Russia said on Wednesday that the UN Security Council should not consider new measures to resolve the crisis in Syria at this point and signaled it would block any effort to authorize military intervention, the Interfax news agency reported.

The warnings came after the French President Francois Hollande said military intervention was not ruled out provided it was backed by the Security Council, and Germany said it would push for "new engagement" by the council on Syria.

Earlier, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the West and certain Arab countries were interfering in Syria and were sending weapons to help bring down the government.

"We cannot trust these people because their objective is to bring down (Syrian President Bashar) Assad," he said. Reuters contributed to the report (Copyright 2012 © Yedioth Internet 05/30/12)