Iran and its close ally President Bashar al-Assad have won the war in Syria and the US-orchestrated campaign in support of the armed opposition’s bid to topple the Syrian regime has failed, senior Iranian officials have told the Guardian.
In a series of interviews in Tehran, top figures who shape Iranian foreign policy said that Western strategy in Syria had merely encouraged radicals, sowed chaos and backfired, with Syrian government forces now on the front foot.
“We have won in Syria,” said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee and an influential government insider. “The regime will stay. The Americans have lost it.”
Photo: Reuters
Terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaida-linked jihadist groups and individuals armed and funded by Sunni Muslim Arab countries was now the main threat facing the Syrian people, Boroujerdi said.
Many foreign fighters who had traveled to Syria from Britain and other European countries could soon return.
“We are worried about the future security of Europe,” Boroujerdi said.
“We won the game in Syria easily,” said Amir Mohebbian, a conservative strategist and Iranian government adviser. “The US does not understand Syria. The Americans wanted to replace [al-] Assad, but what was the alternative? All they have done is encourage radical groups and made the borders less safe.”
“We accept the need for change in Syria — but gradually. Otherwise there is chaos,” he said.
Iranian Minister for Foreign Affairs for European and American Affairs Majid Takht-Ravanchi said the priority was to accept that the rebellion had failed and to restore stability in Syria before next month’s presidential elections.
“Extremism and turmoil in Syria must be tackled seriously by the international community. Those countries that are supplying extremist forces must stop helping them,” he said.
“Iran has good relations with the Syrian government, though that does not mean they listen to us,” Takht-Ravanchi said.
The minister denied Iran had supplied weapons and Iranian Revolutionary Guards combatants to help defeat the rebels, as Western intelligence agencies have claimed.
“Iran has a diplomatic presence there. There is no unusual presence. We have no need to arm the Syrian government,” he said.
Iran is Syria’s main regional backer and has reportedly spent billions of US dollars propping up the regime since the first revolt against al-Assad broke out in March 2011.
Along with Russia, the regime’s principal arms supplier, Iran has consistently bolstered al-Assad in the teeth of attempts to force him to step down.
Despite its influence with Damascus and with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia fighting alongside government forces, Iran has been largely excluded from international talks to forge a peace settlement due to US and British objections that Tehran does not accept the need for al-Assad to quit as part of any transitional deal.
Yet following last week’s rebel retreat from the strategic city of Homs, the so-called “capital of the revolution,” some Western politicians and commentators have also reached the conclusion that al-Assad has won and the opposition’s cause is lost.
The US and its Gulf Arab allies have supplied funding, equipment and arms to the Syrian rebels.
Last year US President Barack Obama appeared on the point of launching air and missile attacks over the al-Assad government’s use of chemical weapons, but Obama’s last-minute decision to pull back was interpreted in Tehran and Damascus as a sign that the US was having second thoughts and was not wholly committed to winning the war.
Western analysts say predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran is engaged in a region-wide power struggle or proxy war, extending beyond Syria, with the Sunni Muslim Arab states of the Gulf, principally Saudi Arabia.
Tehran thus has an obvious interest in claiming victory for the Syrian regime, they say. Iranian officials and regional experts deny that is their motive.
“I think the Americans made a big mistake in Syria and I think they know it, though they would never say so,” Tehran university professor Mohammad Marandi said.
“If they had accepted the [former UN secretary-general Kofi] Annan plan in 2012 [which would have left al-Assad in place pending a ceasefire and internationally-monitored elections], we could have avoided all this,” he said.
“Iran sincerely believed it had no other option but to support the al-Assad government. Anything else would have resulted in the collapse of Syria and it falling into the hands of extremists,” he added.
More than 150,000 people are believed to have died in the Syrian conflict and at least 9 million people have been displaced.
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