Imam Khamenei’s Top Military Aide: Turkey, Arabs Defeated in Proxy War on Syria

Senior military aide to the Iranian Supreme Leader Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said the US and Israel as well as their Turkish and Arab proxies in the war on Syria have been defeated and Bashar al-Assad is just inches away from complete victory.
“The war in Syria is actually the United States’ and the Zionist regime’s war which is fought by Turkey and Arab states as their proxies and Israel’s military attack on Syria disclosed the proxy nature of this war more than before,” Rahim Safavi said addressing university students in the Southern Kerman Province of Wednesday.

He said the Arab and even European states recruited, trained, armed and paid salaries to over 40,000 mercenaries and infiltrated them into Syria via the country’s borders with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, adding that the main part of these militants were Al-Qaeda members trained and backed up by Qatar and Saudi Arabia during the Afghan war.

Safavi said supporters of these militants planned to disturb Syria and then push Iraq into instability.

“But Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian army have been fighting them for the last three years and now the terrorists have been almost defeated from the military perspectives and lost a major part of their positions and controlled areas to the Damascus army,” he said.

Gen. Safavi described the 50,000-strong popular resistance movement formed by the Syrian government as a main contributor to the Damascus victory over the rebels.

“Now the terrorists and militant mercenaries have been defeated from military viewpoints. They have sustained heavy casualties and surrendered to the Damascus in large numbers.

“What is left is the Geneva II conference. On one side, there will be the US, Israel, France, England, Turkey and some Arab states which supported the opposition,” he said and explained, “As a result of its domestic issues, Turkey has now realized its strategic mistake and left the front. Saudi Arabia is dealing with its Egypt project. The rest of the front is present but defeated.”

“But on the other side of this front, there reside Russia, China and Iran which aided Syria. Of course, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah aided Syria politically and internationally as they support restoration of peace, stability and tranquility to Syria,” Ayatollah Khamenei’s military aide said.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes.

The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

In October 2011, calm was almost restored in the Arab state after President Bashar al-Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies sought hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots to topple President al-Assad, who is well known in the world for his anti-Israeli stances.