PHOTO: Supreme Leader’s aide Ali Akbar Velayati “US intervention will be third defeat in region”
Iran’s regime has warned the US against direct military intervention against the Assad regime’s forces in Syria’s conflict.
As Russia and Iran lead air and ground offensives to try and defeat the Syrian opposition and rebels, the Supreme Leader’s chief aide issued the warning.
Ali Akbar Velayati said, “If the Americans take military action in Syria, it will be a suicidal action. Their third defeat in the region after Afghanistan and Iraq will be a stronger defeat.”
Accompanying Russia’s essential aerial intervention from September 2015, Iran has put in commanders and troops and led the foreign militias needed to prop up the Syrian army and advance against rebels, especially in northwest Syria.
The campaign appeared to be in trouble in the spring amid a rebel counter-offensive that defeated Iranian-led units near Syria’s largest city Aleppo. However, the Russian airpower has enabled a turn in fortunes, with pro-Assad forces imposing a siege and constricting opposition-held areas.
See Syria Daily, October 3: Pro-Assad Forces Advance Farther in Aleppo
Velayati said on Sunday:
It is almost six years that the people of Syria have been resisting interference by foreigners, especially the Westerners, with the US at the top. The Syrian nation has the capability to withstand US military intervention, and the Americans will not do that.
The Supreme Leader’s aide put out the message even though there is no evidence of a US attempt to check the pro-Assad forces. The American intervention from September 2014 and its support of ground units, notably the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, has been focused on defeating the Islamic State in its areas of Syria.
However, Iran has used the American accidental bombing of regime forces last month in eastern Syria, killing more than 60 troops near a frontline with ISIS, to claim a deliberate US strategy to hold back the Syrian military.
“US Using Terrorism as Tool”
Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani bolstered Velayati’s line, claiming that “some countries” support Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, which pledged allegiance to Al Qa’eda until late July.
Larijani said as he met a Belgian parliamentarian, “Unfortunately the US, along with some of its regional allies, is using the phenomenon of terrorism as a tool and does not have the necessary resolve to eradicate this ominous and dangerous phenomenon.”