(Atlantic) Karim Sadjadpour - Tehran's steadfast support for Syria's Assad is not driven by the geopolitical or financial interests of the Iranian nation, nor the religious convictions of the Islamic Republic, but by a visceral and seemingly inextinguishable hatred for the State of Israel. As senior Iranian officials like Ali Akbar Velayati, a close adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have said, "The chain of Resistance against Israel by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, the new Iraqi government and Hamas passes through the Syrian highway." Though Israel has virtually no direct impact on the daily lives of Iranians, opposition to the Jewish state has been the most enduring pillar of Iranian revolutionary ideology. Whether Khamenei is giving a speech about agriculture or education, he invariably returns to the evils of Zionism. The number of Syrian deaths since 2011 is many times greater than the number of Palestinians killed in the last 70 years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while many more Syrians than Palestinians have been displaced. Indeed, since 2011 far more Palestinians have been killed by Assad (nearly 3,700) than by Israel. "Syria is occupied by the Iranian regime," said former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab. "The person who runs the country is not Bashar al-Assad but [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander] Qassem Suleimani." The writer is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.
2018-04-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive