Top Tehran officials in celebrated the devastation driving Syrian rebels out of their controlled enclaves in the Syrian city of Aleppo on Wednesday, saying it showed that Iran has been given rise, becoming a regional leading power .
Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan rang his Syrian counterpart Fahd Jassem al-Freij to congratulate him on the ‘victories’ of the Syrian army in securing its control over the city of Aleppo.
Iran claims that only ‘takfiri’, hardliners and terrorists reside in the rebel-held areas of Alepp self-legitimizing the grand-scale and inhumane military action taken to turn the city’s reins to the ruling regime.
Despite the growing reported deaths of Iranian soldiers in cross-border operations in Syria, Tehran admits to its paramilitary Revolutionary Guards only playing an advisory role in the conflict.
“The new American president must accept the reality that Iran is the leading power in the region,” the Guards’ Sepahnews website quoted top foreign policy adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Yahya Safavi saying.
Western governments counter that Syrian regime head Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own people in more than five years of war.
Asharq Al-Awsat English
Asharq Al-Awsat is the world’s premier pan-Arab daily newspaper, printed simultaneously each day on four continents in 14 cities. Launched in London in 1978, Asharq Al-Awsat has established itself as the decisive publication on pan-Arab and international affairs, offering its readers in-depth analysis and exclusive editorials, as well as the most comprehensive coverage of the entire Arab world.
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