Mohammed Farouk Tay-four, a leader in Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, told The Washington Times Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi sent three emissaries to Istanbul in late October to try to broker the deal.
“We refused to meet with them,” said Tayfour, one of nine members of the executive committee of the Syrian National Council, which is the main organization of the opposition outside Syria. “We told them [through a Turkish mediator] that Iran has been taking sides against the Syrian people.
“When Iran takes the side of the Syrian people, then we are willing to meet with the envoys and talk with them,” he said at the council’s office in Istanbul last week. “Otherwise, there is no way we can meet with the Iranians when they are assisting in the killing of our people.”
Tayfour said the Turkish mediator was a personal acquaintance, not a government official, and that Ankara had no involvement in the overture.
He said the mediator reached out to him three times in one week in an attempt to set up a face-to-face meeting with the emissaries, who were then staying at an Istanbul hotel.
Tayfour’s revelation suggests how deeply the Islamic Republic is involved in trying to preserve Assad’s grip on power.
In the interview, Tayfour said Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, were sending snipers and other operatives into Syria to help the regime quell the nearly 10-month-old uprising.
The United States has charged Iran with helping Syria mount electronic surveillance of the opposition, but has not endorsed opposition charges that Iranian gunmen were in Syria to kill protesters.
For the first time, Tayfour said the council was thinking that it might need international military support, something Iran has heatedly and publicly opposed. “Our choice is to stop the killing of civilians, to protect civilians, and, if there is no other choice than foreign military intervention like that which happened in Libya, then we have to accept it,” he said.
He said there is “almost a consensus” among his colleagues on seeking international military action, echoing comments of another executive board member.
Samir Nashar told The Washington Times Saturday that most of his colleagues support foreign military action to oust Assad “but they might not be brave enough to express it openly.”