With Western pressure growing on Bashar Assad over the latest
massacres of defenseless women and children in Syria, Iranian
officials again are warning the world against any action against the
Middle East dictator.
The pro-Assad “resistance” has its finger on the trigger and the
aggressors will not survive the conflict, a senior commander of the
Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazaeri, told Mashregh, a
media outlet run by the Guards. Iranian officials often refer to
Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as the resistance front.
Mashregh reported in March that Iran’s armed forces had formed a
joint war room that included officers from Syria, Iran and Hezbollah
for a coordinated military response to an attack on Syria.
“A conflict in Syria will engulf the region and its main victims will
be the people of Syria themselves,” Jazaeri warned the
protesters. “The Zionist regime and the interests of the enemies of
Syria are all within range of the resistance fire.”
Citing a conspiracy to weaken the resistance front and that foreign
hands were involved in the events in Syria, Jazaeri said, “At the
right time, people of the region will retaliate against these
actions. The defeat of the enemy at this stage will be a big event
and, God willing, we will witness that.”
There have been several reports alluding to the Revolutionary Guards’
involvement in the Syrian suppression. Recently the deputy commander
of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Cmdr. Esmail Ghani, said his forces have
been playing a “physical and nonphysical” role in Syria.
The Guards last year called Syrian protesters “rabble-rousers” who
are “puppets of Zionists and the United States” and that their
chanting slogans against Iran and Hezbollah “will be their last
stand.”
On Thursday, U.N. observers were fired upon as they tried to reach
the site of the latest massacre of civilians, many of them women and
children, who were shot or stabbed, the fourth such massacre in two
weeks. More than 10,000 civilians have so far lost their lives in the
brutal suppression ordered by Assad and abetted by Iran and Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, the head of Iran’s Basij militia made clear that Iran will
not tolerate the fall of Assad.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who has been sanctioned by the U.S.
Treasury Department for human rights abuses in Iran, told Lebanese TV
Al Manar, “After the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and the
disruption to their defensive posture in protecting the Zionist
regime, America in order to defend the regime of the occupier of the
Quds (Jerusalem) is after a new scenario in Syria. … But they will be
defeated.”
The Basij commander warned Israel against any attack on Iran or
Syria, stating, “Today all the people of the region are ready for
wiping out this cancerous tumor, and reaction to any aggression will
be the freedom of Quds.”
Naghdi also said the West was wrong in believing that international
sanctions against Iran will force the Islamic republic to accept
demands that it yield on its clandestine nuclear program.
“Sanctions have had a lot of effect on Iran, but one positive one is
the growth of science and internal production. … If the American
president did not have his hands in the blood of nations of the
world, specifically Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine, and had
not embraced torture, we would have given him a national medal for
his service to the Iranian nation for imposing sanctions.”
Naghdi predicted that America will be forced to pack up and leave the
region, taking with it all of its forces.
