A senior Iranian Army officer admitted Iran has already located troops in Syria from Iranian Revolutionary Guards to support the regime of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fight opposition forces. Syria News
Tehran / NationalTurk – A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander has admitted that Iran has sent its troops to help the regime of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fight opposition forces.
‘Before our presence [ that of Iran Army’s] in Syria, too many people were killed by the opposition but with the physical and non-physical presence of the Islamic republic, big massacres in Syria were prevented,’ Ismail Gha’ani, the deputy head of Iran’s Quds force, a shadowy branch of the Revolutionary Guards in charge of overseas operations, stated in an interview with the semi-official Iranian Student’s News Agency (ISNA), according to a report by the Persian-language GozaraNews website. Syrian army being aided by Iranian forces
Iran plays his cards open on Syria
ISNA published the interview with the senior Iranian army officer on Sunday night, but subsequently removed it from its website ‘under pressure,’ the report notes.
Syria is Iran’s most important regional ally, and Tehran administration has long used its neighbor’s territory as a base for operations to maintain a lifeline to militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran’s proxies in southern Lebanon and Gaza.
Rumors that Iran has provided military support to Bashar al – Assad, to assist his crackdown on the popular uprising that has challenged his family’s 40-year grip on power, have circulated since the outbreak of protests in Syria in March 2011.
Houla Massacre : Syria lost final traces of its humanity
The Gha’ani comments followed the weekend massacre of more than 100 civilians, including dozens of children, in Houla a town in western Syria, which has triggered an international outcry, including a Sunday statement by the UN Security Council describing the massacre as an ‘outrageous use of force against civilian population.’ On Monday, Iran also blamed “foreign interference” and “terrorists” for the killing of more than 100 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Houla.
Syrian opposition activists have blamed the killings on pro-government fighters, an accusation categorically denied by the Syrian authorities, who said the tragedy was a terrorist plot aimed at undermining the regime. As the wave of protests swept across the Middle East, Tehran’s leaders found themselves in the peculiar situation of praising the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen but condemning them in Syria, its close ally in the region.
UN observers working in Syria have confirmed that tanks and artillery were used in the weekend attacks on Houla, as well as that many of those killed were stabbed or shot at point-blank range, raising questions among UN observers about who could benefit from the tragedy in Syria.
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