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Iran’s top ranking general in Syria has contradicted the official line taken by Iran’s leaders on the sudden downfall of their ally Bashar al-Assad, saying in a remarkably candid speech last week that Iran had suffered a major defeat but would still try to operate in the country.
An audio recording of the speech, given last week by Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati at a mosque in Tehran, surfaced publicly on Monday in Iranian media, and was a stark contrast to the remarks of Iran’s president, foreign minister and other top leaders. They have for weeks downplayed the magnitude of Iran’s strategic loss in Syria last month, when rebels swept Mr. al-Assad out of power, and said Iran would respect any political outcome decided by Syria’s people.
“I don’t consider losing Syria something to be proud of,” said General Esbati according to the audio recording of his speech, which Abdi Media, a Geneva-based news site focused on Iran, published on Monday. “We were defeated, and defeated very badly, we took a very big blow and it’s been very difficult.”
General Esbati revealed that Iran’s relations with Mr. al-Assad had been strained for months leading to his ouster, saying that the Syrian leader had denied multiple requests for Iranian-backed militias to open a front against Israel from Syria, in the aftermath of the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
Iran had presented Mr. al-Assad with comprehensive military plans on how it could use Iran’s military resources in Syria to attack Israel, he said.
The general also accused Russia, considered a top ally, of misleading Iran by telling it that Russian jets were bombing Syrian rebels when they were actually dropping bombs on open fields. He also said that in the past year, as Israel struck Iranian targets in Syria, Russia had “turned off radars,” in effect facilitating these attacks.
For over a decade, Iran backed Mr. al-Assad by sending commanders and troops to help it fight against opposition rebels and the Islamic State terrorist group.
Under Mr. al-Assad, Syria was Iran’s regional command center from which it supplied weapons and money to its network of regional militias, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants in the West Bank. Iran also controlled airports, warehouses and operated missile and drone manufacturing bases in Syria.
The rebel coalition has now taken over much of Syria and is trying to form a government. General Esbati said in his speech that Iran would look for ways to recruit insurgents in whatever shape the new Syria takes.
“We can activate all the networks we have worked with over the years,” he said. “We can activate the social layers that our guys lived among for years; we can be active in social media and we can form resistance cells.”
He added, “Now we can operate there as we do in other international arenas, and we have already started.”
The general’s comments have stunned Iranians, for both their unfiltered content and the speaker’s stature. He is a top commander of Iran’s Armed Forces, the umbrella that includes the military and the Revolutionary Guards Corps, with a record of prominent roles including commander in chief of the Armed Forces’ cyber division.
In Syria, he supervised Iran’s military operations and coordinated closely with Syrian ministers and defense officials and with Russian generals — outranking even the commander in chief of the Quds Forces, Gen. Ismail Ghaani, who oversees the network of regional militias backed by Iran.
Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent analyst in Tehran and expert on Syria, said in a telephone interview that General Esbati’s speech was significant because it showed that some senior officials were parting from government propaganda and leveling with the public.
“Everyone is talking about the speech in meetings and wondering why he said these things, especially at a public forum,” Mr. Rahmati said. “He very clearly laid out what happened to Iran and where it stands now. In a way it can be a warning for domestic politics.”
General Esbati said the fall of the Assad regime was inevitable given the rampant corruption, political oppression and economic hardship that people faced, from lack of power to fuel to livable incomes. He said Mr. al-Assad had ignored the warnings to reform. Mr. Rahmati, the analyst, said that the comparison to Iran’s current situation was hard to miss.
Despite the general’s assertions about activating networks, it remains unclear what Iran can realistically do in Syria, given the public and political opposition it has faced in the country and the challenges of land and air access. Israel has warned that it would decimate any Iranian efforts it detects on the ground in Syria.
And while Iran has the experience of operating in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003 — including sowing unrest — the geography and political landscape of Syria differ greatly, presenting more challenges.
An Iranian member of the Revolutionary Guards who spent years in Iraq as a military strategist alongside senior commanders said in a telephone interview that General Esbati’s comments about Iran recruiting insurgents might be more aspirational than practical at this stage. He said that while General Esbati had admitted a serious defeat, he had also sought to boost morale and pacify conservatives demanding that Iran act more forcefully.
The Guards official, who asked that his name not be used because he was discussing sensitive issues, said Iran’s policy had not yet been finalized but that a consensus had emerged in meetings he had attended where strategy was debated. He said Iran would benefit if Syria descended into chaos because Iran knew how to thrive and secure its interests in a turbulent landscape.
In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards have the authority to set regional policy and overrule the foreign ministry.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on key state matters, has said in at least two speeches since Mr. al-Assad’s fall that resistance was not dead in Syria, adding that Syria’s youth would reclaim their country from the ruling rebels, whom he called stooges of Israel and the United States. President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have been more conciliatory, saying they favor stability in Syria and diplomatic ties with the new government.
The tensions surrounding these competing views on Syria preoccupied officials enough that they embarked on a campaign of damage control with the public last week. Senior military commanders and pundits close to the government gave speeches and held question-and-answer sessions with audiences in mosques and community centers in several cities.
General Esbati’s speech, on Dec. 31 at the Valiasr mosque in central Tehran, addressed rank and file of the military and constituents of the mosque, according to a public notice of the event, titled, “Answering questions about Syria’s collapse.”
The session started with General Esbati telling the crowd he left Syria on the last military plane to Tehran the night before Damascus fell to rebels. It ended with him answering questions from audience members. He offered his most sobering assessment on Iran’s military capability in fighting Israel and the United States.
Asked whether Iran would retaliate for Israel killing Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, he replied that Iran already did, referring to a missile barrage last fall. Asked whether Iran planned to carry out a third round of direct strikes on Israel, he said that “the situation” couldn’t realistically handle another attack on Israel right now.
Asked why Iran would not fire missiles at U.S. military bases in the region, he said that would invite bigger retaliatory attacks on Iran and its allies by the United States, adding that Iran’s regular missiles — not its advanced ones — could not penetrate advanced U.S. defense systems.
Despite those assessments, General Ebati said that he wanted to assure everyone not to worry: Iran and its allies, he said, still had the upper hand on the ground in the region.