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| File photos of Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Taeb (top) and parading Hezbollah fighters |
The Syrian opposition’s break with the Islamic
Republic of Iran and its Lebanese cat’s-paw Hezbollah is total and has come
into the open.
The Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and
Opposition Forces posted a statement on its Facebook page overnight accusing Iran
and Hezbollah of waging open war on the Syrian people.
The statement said in part, “The direct involvement
of Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in the killings, crimes and attacks on
Syrians—under the pretext of defending the Assad regime – has been well
documented since the beginning of the Syrian revolution.
“On top of that came fresh declarations by Iranian
leaders, which can only be described as insolent meddling in the Syrian
people’s affairs. The patronizing pronouncements amount to a declaration of
open war on the Syrian people, such as the call for a rapid deployment force
specialized in urban warfare to support the Assad regime.
“Iran and its lackey Hezbollah’s involvement in
Syrian affairs, and their flagrant aggression against Syria’s people and
national sovereignty are inadmissible and violate international law.
“The Syrian National Coalition strongly condemns
repeated attacks on Syrian territory by Hezbollah fighters. The attacks are driven
by Iranian declarations that smack of hateful colonial undertones. They expose the
Iranians’ loss of political rationale and their advocacy of ideological
rubbish.”
According to the Syrian opposition, fighting
began on Saturday as Hezbollah fighters, in control of eight Syrian border
villages, tried to move into three adjacent ones -- Burhanieh, Abu Houri and
Safarja -- in the Qusayr region of Homs
held by Syrian Free Army (FSA) forces.
Regime
helicopters fired rockets at rebel positions to support the advancing Hezbollah
unit, which included pro-Assad militiamen recruited from the villages it
controls, residents said.
"The Hezbollah
force moved on foot and was supported by multiple rocket launchers. The FSA had
to call in two tanks that had been captured from Assad’s army to repel the
attack," Hadi al-Abdallah of the Syrian Revolution General Commission told
Reuters by phone.
FSA spokesman Louay
al-Miqdad called the Hezbollah operation an "unprecedented invasion",
according to Beirut’s independent daily an-Nahar.
"Hezbollah's
invasion is the first of its kind in terms of organization, planning and
coordination with the Syrian regime's air force," Miqdad was quoted as
saying.
An unnamed Hezbollah
spokesman confirmed three Shiite deaths, but without saying whether they belong
to the group.
AFP news agency quoted the spokesman as
saying the dead fighters had been acting "in self-defense.”
Several Syrian rebels were
also killed in the clashes, which came days after a senior commander of Iran's
Revolutionary Guards was killed travelling from Syria to Lebanon.
The Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights said Revolutionary Guards commanding officer
Hassan Shateri was ambushed and killed by rebels while heading to
Beirut from Damascus (see my February 14
post, “Iran point man killed heading from Syria to Lebanon).
Shateri was a veteran
of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, and served in Afghanistan before going to Lebanon,
where he posed as “Hessam Khoshnevis,” head of an Iranian agency
set up to help rebuild Hezbollah-controlled areas devastated by the 2006 war
with Israel.
On the eve of Shateri’s
burial last Friday in his hometown of Semnan, some 150
kilometers east of Tehran, Hojjatoleslam Mehdi
Taeb, a senior cleric from supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s inner circle,
said Syria is so strategic to the Islamic Republic that it is considered as
Iran's 35th province, and that losing Syria would result in losing Tehran.
He told university student
members of the Basij militia: “Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a
strategic province for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate
either Syria or Khuzestan [in western Iran], the priority is that we keep
Syria.... If we keep Syria, we can get Khuzestan back too. But if we lose
Syria, we cannot keep Tehran."
Taeb – head of the Ammar strategic
base, which is focused on cyber war and soft war --
also pointed to the Islamic Republic's support of Syrian militias through
Iranian advisors inside the country.
He explained, “Syria had
an army, but did not have the ability to manage a war inside Syria’s cities. It
is for this reason the Iranian government suggested that, to manage an urban
war you must form a Basij…The Syrian Basij was formed with 60,000
[members] of the Party of God (Hezbollah), who took over the war on the
streets from the army."
Two Lebanese columnists, writing
today for an-Nahar, slam both Hojjatoleslam
Taeb and Hezbollah.
Rajeh el-Khoury says, “Blatant Iranian
interference in Syria comes after a series of complicities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
Kuwait, the UAE and at the side of Yemen’s Houthis. They also come after a
long history of threats and claims to the right of being the region’s éminence
grise at the price of
poisoning intra-Muslim relations and mobilizing Sunnis to confront Shiites in
the 35th province.”
Ali
Hamadeh believes the “inevitable consequence” of Hezbollah’s “diabolic” and
“criminal” involvement in the killing of Syrians will be to bring the conflict
to the “heart of Lebanon” at the cost of innocent Lebanese lives.
