NCRI – Ali Akbar Velayati, the Iranian regime’s former Foreign Minister and currently advisor on international affairs to the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has once again defended Syria’s criminal dictator Bashar al-Assad.
In a meeting with the Syrian regime’s ambassador to Tehran on Saturday, April 23, Velayati said: “The Islamic Republic of Iran certainly supports the Government of President Bashar Al-Assad. Any plans against the interests of the nation of Syria will not be accepted. The recent [April 13, 2016] parliamentary election in such difficult conditions was a significant measure to represent the authority of the Syrian government.”
He then attempted to justify the widespread presence of the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its mercenaries in Syria.
“Iran’s military presence in Syria is at the invitation of the Syrian government and not by any other country.”
According to reports from Syria, the Assad regime controls less than 40 percent of Syrian territory. Half of Syria’s 20 million population is now displaced. The so-called parliamentary election, mentioned by Velayati, was only held in territories under the control of Assad’s forces.
The U.S. State Department on April 14 said the Syrian elections were neither “credible” nor “fair.”
The Iranian regime’s military forces are widely involved in Syria’s civil war along with Russia and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Until recently, Iran’s regime only sent its IRGC forces to Syria, but in the past several weeks, on Khamenei’s orders, units of the Iranian regime’s regular army have also been dispatched there. The mullahs’ regime has sustained high numbers of casualties in the Syrian conflict.
The Brussels-based European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA) in a statement on Saturday urged the international community to act urgently to stop the Iranian regime’s military presence in Syria.
“Iran’s army entering the war in Syria is a blatant violation of international law and must be met with an overwhelming response and action by the international community,” said EIFA President Struan Stevenson.
“With the Syrian revolution against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad entering its sixth year, Tehran has escalated the presence in Syria of its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), together with regular Iranian military units, who are waging a brutal campaign against the Syrian people and the moderate opposition.”
“In recent weeks, a significant number of special commandos of Iran’s regular army have been killed in Syria, pointing to their extensive presence in that conflict. The failure of the IRGC, especially in the Aleppo’s zone and their massive casualties in recent months in Syria, has reportedly caused Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei to dispatch his regular army to bolster pro Assad forces in this criminal war,” the statement added.
Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, said in a recent interview with the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat that the mullahs’ regime in Iran would collapse once Syrian dictator Assad is toppled.
Mrs. Rajavi said that the mullahs’ regime has deployed some 60,000 IRGC troops and affiliated non-Iranian militias to fight in Syria.
She added that the Iranian regime is founded on three main pillars: obtaining a nuclear bomb, absolute domestic suppression and export of terrorism and extremism abroad.
Mrs. Rajavi pointed out that Tehran’s strategy is based on interference in the internal affairs of other countries, warmongering and export of terrorism; however, the regime’s regional plots failed after the start of the Decisive Storm operation against its proxies.
“If Assad falls out of power in Damascus, then the Iranian regime will evidently follow and collapse in Tehran,” Mrs. Rajavi said.
