PHOTO: Syria’s President Assad with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif

LATEST: Supreme Leader Released After Week in Hospital

MONDAY FEATURE

Iran Feature: Supreme Leader “I Rejected US Offer to Cooperate Over Iraq”

Social media buzzed on Sunday with claims that Iran’s regime has given up on Syria’s embattled President Assad after supporting him with vital political, military, and economic assistance during 42 months of conflict.

The source of the chatter was an article in London’s Daily Telegraph, “Support for Assad Starting to Fade as Allies Become Disillusioned by Setbacks”: “Some say that Iran — the regime’s most important supporter – is no longer committed to propping him up at the expense of forging a wider settlement in the region.

However, on close examination, the story appears to be more spin than substance. The “some” cited by the article are not Iranian officials but unnamed “diplomats” — presumably from Western powers hostile to Iran — putting out the line, “I think Iran now realises they cannot win the Syrian conflict whilst Assad is in power.”

The article also cites a “diplomat who has recently held talks with Iranian leaders”, saying that Tehran is prepared to “burn” Assad, especially if it assists a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, beyond the Telegraph’s view, the Iranian regime is putting out a much different message to the US and its partners: we will only consider working with you in Iraq against the Islamic State if you stop any support for Syrian insurgents.

Both Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani and Iran’s chief political operative over Iraq — the Secretary of the National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani — were clear this weekend in their denunciation of the US backing of “terrorism”.

Shamkhani said that the American pursuit of a coalition against the Islamic State was only a diversion from “the establishment, equipment and development of…terrorist groups under the pretext of overthrowing the [Assad] government”.

Meeting a senior French MP in Tehran on Sunday, Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian continued the criticism of the “wrong and selective approach [of] the West and the US” towards Syria.

And Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told reporters today, “The foreign powers and the Zionist regime have supported these groups, and what is done now [for an anti-Islamic State coalition] is meant to distract attention of the world public opinion from the powers’ support [for them].”

See Iran Daily, Sept 14: Tehran Continues Its Attacks on US Over Iraq

Meanwhile in Syria, Iranian forces have been involved in a counter-offensive to push back insurgents who had moved within 2-3 kilometers of Hama, Syria’s 4th-largest city, and its Military Airport.

Supreme Leader Released After Week in Hospital

The Supreme Leader’s office says on Twitter that Ayatollah Khamenei has been released from hospital, a week after a prostate operation.

The Supreme Leader has marked the occasion by condemning the US pursuit of a coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq as “empty, shallow, and biased”.

Head of Basij Militia: White House is “Command Center for Islamic State”

The head of the Basij militia, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, has stepped up the rhetoric blaming the US for the jihadists of the Islamic State, as Iran continues to worry about American intervention in Iraq — notably through airstrikes against the Islamic State that it supposedly created.

Naqdi told an audience in central Iran on Sunday, “The command center of the Islamic State is in the White House.

The US has created this cancerous tumor…in the region, and its plan to fight the Islamic State is also the continuation of the same evil plot that it has pursued so far.”