January 17, 2025
The Pasdar general who ran Iranian operations in Syria says Iran’s relations with President Bashar al-Assad had
become strained in the past year because Assad had rebuffed repeated Iranian requests to allow it to launch attacks against Israel from Syrian soil using the militia troops it commanded in Syria. He also complained that the Russians lied when they said they were bombing the rebel offensive to try to save Assad.
He said the Russian warplanes just dropped their bombs in the desert. That was contradicted by the fact that many in Syria had reported seeing the Russians bomb the rebels, although only for the first few days of the rebel offensive that began in late November. Brig. Gen. Behruz Esbati, the Pasdar commander in Syria, shared his observations in a speech December 31.
He also said that Iran was now helping groups inside Syria in an effort to defeat the rebels. “We can activate all the networks we have worked with over the years. We can activate the social groups that our people lived among for years. We can be active in social media and we can form resistance cells.
Now, we can operate there as we do in other foreign arenas. And we have already started,” he said, announcing as active policy what many others in Iran have been suggesting Iran should do. But his remarks drawing the most attention were his acknowledgement that Iran had suffered a huge defeat in Syria when Assad was driven from the country and the Pasdaran were driven from it as well. Iranians have spent the past month boasting that the Islamic Republic is now stronger than ever and that the loss of Assad was a minor event.
This theme has been a major regime campaign, uttered almost hourly by civilian and military officials up to and including the Supreme Leader. But General Esbati apparently didn’t get the memo. “I don’t consider losing Syria anything to be proud of,” he said in an audio recording of his speech obtained by opposition media. “We were defeated and defeated very badly. We took a very big blow and it’s been very difficult.” It remains to be seen if he will be disciplined for contradicting the Supreme Leader.
His attack on Iran’s Russian allies, treating them as liars, which many Iranians have believed for centuries, also put him at odds with the official line. As for his claim that Assad refused to allow Iran to attack Israel from Syrian soil, there is nothing odd about that. Ever since Syria was mauled on the battlefield by Israel a half-century ago, Damascus has sustained its Arab credentials by verbally lashing Israel but at the same time has done nothing militarily that could possibly offend the Jewish state as Syria clearly does not want another war.
Esbati said the Assad regime’s fall was inevitable, given its immense corruption, the ever-weakening economy and the extent of political repression. That was an odd view to propound given that he listed the very points the opposition in Iran cites about the ruling regime. Esbati was asked if Iran would attack Israel in retaliation for killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
He said Iran had already done that last October. Asked if Iran should retaliate again as Pasdar leaders have repeatedly said Iran will Esbati said the regime could not realistically launch another attack on Israel right now again a major departure from the official line. He was also asked why the Islamic Republic is not launching missiles at the many American bases well within their range.
Esbati said any such attack would just invite an even larger retaliatory attack by the Americans. Iran’s relations with the new Syrian regime are at best chilly. Neither party is openly hostile to the other. Syria has said Iran will play no future role in Syria, but it isn’t tossing brickbats and complaining about Iran lording it over Syria the past decade.
The new foreign minister, Assad ashShaibani, said, “Iran is a neighboring country and we do not wish to eliminate them. But we hope they reconsider their [hostile] position and actions toward the Syrian people…. We warn them against spreading chaos in Syria and we hold them accountable for the repercussions of their recent remarks.” And Ahmed ash-Sharaa, the commander of the rebel forces, said, “We were expecting some positive statements from Tehran.”
He also said, “By removing Iranian militias and closing Syria to Iranian influence, we’ve served the region’s interests achieving what diplomacy and external pressure could not, with minimal losses.” In fact, he was saying the entire Arab world should be grateful and should show it by helping Syria get back on its feet.
The Arab League was not reticent and issued a statement December 26 saying it “rejects the Iranian statements aimed at fueling strife among the Syrian people.” The Iranian media are allowed to carry reports of politicians saying Iran should seek to topple the rebels and reporting on alleged anti-Shiite actions by the new government.
But the Islamic Republic has not damned the rebels officially. The Iranian media have carried many stories about rebel troops assigned to the Shiite shrine just outside Damascus being discourteous, reports seemingly designed to inflame Iranian anger against the rebels. Independent reports do say there have been untoward acts by troops at the shrine. But the new government appears to be disciplining those soldiers and removing the bad ones.
The big problem for Iran in Syria, however, may not be the new regime, but the fact that Turkiye is close to the rebels and appears to have replaced Iran and Russia as the main foreign power with influence in Damascus. The Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shifted its focus years ago from seeing Turkiye as European and has been trying to reestablish itself in the Arab world with the status it had in the Ottoman era.
That puts it in direct conflict with the Islamic Republic, which wants Iran to be the main outside power in the Arab world. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi has not openly called for opposition to the new Syrian regime, but he has said that he is sure Syrian youth will resist “foreign occupation” in Syria. That could be seen as standard antiAmerican rhetoric.
But the real foreign influence in Syria is now from Turkiye, so the remark could be seen as anti-Turkish. But there is a basis for fearing a growing US role in Syria. For starters, the new Syrian government has just ignored the American presence. It isn’t beating the drums demanding US withdrawal. It is just silent. Furthermore, just before the rebel offensive that toppled Assad began, the US military sent more troops into eastern Syria.
For years, the US had about 900 troops there. Now, it says, there are 2,000 US troops there. The Americans are in eastern Syria, where there is little population and where the new government has no presence. The US troops do three things: they whack any Islamic State forces they find; they support the anti-Assad Kurdish forces there; and they try to make it hard for Iran to move weapons into Syria.
The biggest irony of Assad’s fall is that shortly before his end, both the United States and the major Arab states long opposed to him had shifted their stands and were working to bring him back into the Arab fold. Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE had resumed relations with him after years of trying to isolate him. They began inviting him and his ministers to Arab gatherings just before he fell.
The United States was reportedly offering to restore his status in exchange for his keeping the Islamic Republic at arm’s length. The New York Times reported December 4 that Washington told Assad that it was willing to withdraw American soldiers from Syria and reduce sanctions in return for him blocking Iranian arms from being sent to Hezbollah through Syria.
