Iran’s top general in Syria contradicted the Iranian leader’s official stance on the sudden fall of his ally Bashar al-Assad, saying in a very candid speech last week that Iran had suffered a major defeat but still Efforts will be made to take action in Syria.
A recording of a speech delivered last week by Brigadier General. General Behrouz Esparti’s remarks, made public in Iranian media on Monday at a mosque in Tehran, contrasted with those of Iran’s president, foreign minister and other senior leaders. For weeks, they have downplayed the extent of Iran’s strategic losses in Syria last month, when rebels ousted Assad from power, and said Iran would respect any political outcome decided by the Syrian people.
“I don’t think losing Syria is something to be proud of,” General Esparti said, according to a recording of his speech. “We got beat and we got beat badly, we got hit hard and it was very difficult.”
General Esparti revealed that Iran’s relations with Assad had been tense in the months before Assad’s ouster, saying that the Syrian leader had repeatedly refused to allow Iranian-backed militias to launch attacks against Israel from Syria. Requests from the front.
He said Iran had submitted a comprehensive military plan to Assad on how to use Iran’s military resources in Syria to attack Israel.
The general also accused Russia, considered a top ally, of misleading Iran by telling it that Russian warplanes were bombing Syrian rebels when in fact they were dropping bombs in open fields. He also said that when Israel attacked Iranian targets in Syria last year, Russia “turned off its radar” and effectively facilitated those attacks.
For more than a decade, Iran has sent commanders and troops to support Assad in his fight against opposition insurgents and the Islamic State terror group.
Under Assad, Syria serves as Iran’s regional command center through which Iran supplies weapons and funding to its network of regional militias, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants in the West Bank. Iran also controls Syrian airports, warehouses and operates missile and drone manufacturing bases.
A rebel coalition has now captured much of Syria and is working to form a government. In his message, General Esparti said that whatever form the new Syria takes, Iran will find ways to recruit rebels.
“We can activate all the networks we’ve worked with over the years,” he said. “We can activate the social classes in which our people have lived for years; we can be active on social media, we can form resistance cells.
“Now we can operate there like we do on other international stages, and we’ve already started,” he added.
The general’s comments shocked Iranians for their unfiltered content and the stature of the speaker. He is the top commander of Iran’s armed forces, which includes the army and the Revolutionary Guards, and has held important positions including commander-in-chief of the armed forces’ cyber department.
In Syria, he oversees Iranian military operations and coordinates closely with Syrian ministers, defense officials and Russian generals, eclipsing even Quds Force chief Ismail Ghani, who oversees a network of Iran-backed regional militias. General.
Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent analyst in Tehran and an expert on Syria, said in a telephone interview that General Esparti’s speech was significant because it showed that some senior officials were breaking away from government propaganda and coming clean to the public.
“Everyone is discussing the speech at the conference and wondering why he said these things, especially in a public forum,” Mr Rahmati said. “He laid out very clearly what happened in Iran and where it is now. In a way, it can be a warning for domestic politics.
General Esparti said the fall of the Assad regime was inevitable given rampant corruption, political repression and the economic hardship faced by the people, from lack of electricity and fuel to subsistence income. He said Assad ignored warnings about reform. Analyst Rahmati said it was difficult to ignore the comparisons with the current situation in Iran.
Despite the general’s claims to activate the network, it’s unclear what Iran can actually do in Syria, given the public and political opposition it faces there and the challenges it faces with land and air access. Israel has warned that it will destroy any Iranian operations it detects on the ground in Syria.
While Iran has experience operating in Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003—including sowing the seeds of unrest—Syria’s geographical and political landscape is very different, posing additional challenges.
A member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who served for years as a military strategist in Iraq alongside senior commanders said in a telephone interview that Gen. Esparti’s comments about Iran’s recruitment of insurgents may be more of an idealistic one at this stage. Not actual. He said that while Gen. Esparti acknowledged the crushing defeat, he was also trying to boost morale and reassure conservatives who were demanding stronger action from Iran.
The security official, who asked not to be named discussing sensitive issues, said Iran’s policy had not yet been finalized but that consensus had been reached at meetings he attended to discuss strategy. He said that if Syria falls into chaos, Iran will benefit from it because Iran knows how to thrive in turbulent situations and secure its interests.
In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards have the power to set regional policy and veto decisions by the foreign ministry.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on major national affairs, has said in at least two speeches since Assad’s fall that Syria’s resistance has not died, adding that Syria young people will take back their country from the ruling rebels. President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi took a more conciliatory tone, saying they supported stability in Syria and diplomatic relations with the new government.
Tensions surrounding these conflicting views on Syria have officials so preoccupied that they began a damage-control campaign with the public last week. Senior military commanders and experts close to the government gave speeches and held question-and-answer sessions with audiences at mosques and community centers in several cities.
According to the event’s announcement, titled “Answering questions about the collapse of Syria,” General Esbaty spoke at the Waliyasl Mosque in central Tehran on December 31 to the mosque’s rank-and-file military personnel and voters. Speech.
At the start of the meeting, General Esparti told the crowd that he had flown out of Syria on the last military plane to Tehran the night before Damascus fell to rebels. Finally he answered questions from the audience. He offers one of the most sobering assessments of Iran’s military capabilities against Israel and the United States.
Asked whether Iran would retaliate against Israel for the killing of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, he replied that Iran had already done so, referring to last fall’s missile strikes. Asked whether Iran was planning a third direct attack on Israel, he said the “current situation” could not realistically deal with another attack on Israel.
Asked why Iran would not launch missiles at U.S. military bases in the region, he said that would invite larger retaliatory attacks by the U.S. against Iran and its allies, adding that Iran’s conventional missiles — — rather than its advanced missiles — which cannot penetrate America’s advanced defense systems.
Despite these assessments, General Esparti said he wanted to reassure everyone not to worry: Iran and its allies still have the upper hand in the region, he said.
