-Analysis-
The violent clashes last week between Syrian government security forces and supporters of ousted President Bashar al-Assad killed more than 1,200 people, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
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The clashes took place in coastal cities where the Alawite religious sect, from which Assad hails, is concentrated. Triggered by the arrest of Ibrahim Huweija, the former head of the Air Force Intelligence under Assad, the clashes were launched by the Military Council for the Liberation of Syria. This body of mostly Alawite ex-soldiers is led by three former generals of the Assad regime — Miqdad Fathiya, Suheil al-Hassan and Ghiath Suleiman Dalla — who were members of the former Fourth Division, led by Assad’s brother Maher al-Assad.
European intelligence sources indicate that the Military Council could count on some 5,000 members of Assad’s armed forces. At least two other military formations thought to be active against Syria’s transitional government led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa: the Islamic Resistance Front and Syrian Popular Resistance.
Al-Sharaa told the Reuters news agency that a foreign state, which he did not name, was supporting the rebels. This prompted Hezbollah — Tehran’s proxy militia in Lebanon — to issue a statement denying its connection with the Syrian rebels.
Backing from Iran?
Its declaration is somewhat contradicted by the Islamic Resistance Front, which told Kayhan-London it prefers to “support from Lebanese and Iranian brothers for the Syrian resistance.”
We are being backed by brothers in Iran who were present in Syria before the forces of ISIS took power.
A purported spokesman for the Front, who called himself Hamzah Makhluf and spoke by phone from an unspecified European country, told Kayhan-London that “the government of Iran is not backing us even if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has on several occasions stated his support for Syrian resistance forces. We are being backed by brothers in Iran who were present in Syria before the forces of ISIS took power, and who fought alongside us against them.”
Makhluf cited Khamenei’s past comments that “Syria’s brave youngsters would rise, resist, sacrifice themselves and suffer casualties, but ultimately prevail against this situation” or the new regime. The Islamic Resistance Front, Makhluf said, was precisely those “brave youngsters” Khamenei had mentioned, fighting a regime that “was able to take power with the help of Turkey, Israel and America and Russian treachery.”
An important bridge
Makhluf said his group was collaborating with the Military Council for the Liberation of Syria. He called the recent violence on the coast “the start of a battle that will soon begin in other Syrian provinces with the help of Iranian, Lebanese and Iraqi brothers. With the help of God and Iran, we’ll be able to recover our country in the face of the combined plots of ISIS, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and America and the Zionist regime’s direct intervention, and return it to the embrace of the Axis of Resistance under Ayatollah Khamenei’s spiritual leadership.”
Makhluf also referred to “friends in Iran working very hard to unite the efforts of the different resistance groups fighting the usurping regime. Iran’s government is also trying to reveal the ISIS identity of an illegitimate regime that has managed to make itself respectable to the world with the help of Israel and America.”
These comments were corroborated by Ismail Kowsari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee. He told IMNA agency, the official news agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, that “Syrian youngsters won’t remain indifferent, even if time is needed for forces to be mobilized, trained and organized.”
He explained that “Syria has tremendous importance as a bridge to aid Hezbollah and Palestine, and especially Hamas. So a reopening of this bridge, even if it takes some time, will be useful. Right now, there are solutions to strengthen the resistance front, which ultimately will be implemented.”
