BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah told Iran’s supreme leader in 2011 that he believed Bashar Assad’s government would fall, a former Revolutionary Guard general and MP has said.
Recounting his meeting with Nasrallah in Beirut six months ago, MP Mohammad Esmail Kowsari, a member of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission and retired Revolutionary Guard general, told a gathering of Basij members that the Hezbollah leader visited Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei eight months after the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011.
The Basij is a paramilitary force made up of civilian volunteers that operates under the command of the Revolutionary Guard.
“Nasrallah told me, ‘We went to the sayyed [Khamenei] and we reported to him that it seems that Bashar Assad and his government in Syria is finished. But the sayyed said, ‘No it’s not true. We must just do our duties. If we do our duties, Assad and Syria will be stable,’” Kowsari told the Basij gathering, according to his personal website.
“After more than two years, we see that the Syrian government and Bashar Assad remain and are stable.”
Kowsari also defended the Revolutionary Guard against accusations that its forces were playing a major role in combat operations in the war-torn country and referred to videos of Iranian soldiers in Syria that had been posted on Syrian opposition websites.
The rebel Dawud Brigade obtained the videos, which were recorded by Iranian national Hadi Baghbani, after an Aug. 19 ambush in Aleppo that killed the filmmaker as well as Revolutionary Guard commander Esmail Heydari. The brigade has since then been releasing the footage to opposition websites and news outlets.
“It’s natural that a few men be there [in Syria] to understand what’s going on and transfer technology,” Kowsari said. “But why doesn’t anyone ask why the British or Americans are in Middle Eastern countries?
“If really we want to do a military operation, it needs just two days to get these terrorists [opposition forces] out. But as our strategy, each nation has to rely on itself.”
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Nov-28/239187-iranian-mp-nasrallah-believed-assad-would-fall.ashx#ixzz2lwGyabqA
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
