Iran responds to Putin: For these reasons we did not fight with Bashar al-Assad before his fall

"It was never planned for Iran to fight in place of the Syrian army against a movement that does not pose a serious threat to the Islamic Republic," Ali Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Friday in response to a question about Iranian forces' failure to confront the Syrian opposition attacks that led to the downfall of the Assad regime.

He added, "If there was a ready combat force or an opportunity and possibility to transfer forces and equipment and the collapse did not happen quickly, we would have definitely resisted, provided that the Syrian people and army resisted. The Syrian government, until its last days, did not ask it to do so."

In an interview with Khamenei.ir, the website of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Akbar Ahmadian continued that after “terminating the ISIS government, Iran evacuated its forces at the request of the Syrian government, and it did not have an operational presence there for us to decide whether to support or not,” noting that “there was also no possibility of rapid support unless the Syrian army resisted,” refusing to say that Iran had left the arena, stressing: “We were never there to leave it.”

In response to a question about what is said about the Iranian presence in Syria being in vain, the Secretary of the Iranian National Security Council said: “We do not regret” the human and financial cost that Tehran has borne in Syria, stressing that “our presence and our cost were for our security, and the desired gains have been achieved. If ISIS had not been eliminated in Syria and Iraq, it would have cost us dozens of times more today to fight it inside the country.”

He added that the withdrawal of Iranian advisors from Syria came after “we were able to strengthen the capabilities of Hezbollah and Palestine,” saying that “they no longer rely on us, and today Hezbollah has become a completely independent faction that relies on itself.” However, Ahmadian said at the same time in his interview that supporting the resistance “has become more difficult today,” defending the Iranian military presence in Syria over the past years, saying that it was linked to three conditions: “that the official government submit an official request,” “not confronting the people,” according to him, and the third condition is “the existence of interests or a definitive issue.”

For his part, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei responded on Friday to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statements on Thursday regarding the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the Iranian role in its final days, describing them as “inaccurate information,” saying that “it is unnatural for the parties involved in the Syrian developments to present their own narratives regarding their causes and the role of the various players in them,” adding that “some of what was raised regarding the Iranian advisory (military) role in Syria in the final days leading up to the fall of Damascus is not based on accurate information.”

In an interview with the official Iranian news agency IRNA, Baghaei defended his country's policies in Syria over the past years, saying that taking the decision to withdraw the military advisory forces from Syria before the fall of Assad was a "responsible act" in light of the circumstances and observations existing in Syria in terms of security, military and politics, and the reality of the region.

Regarding Putin’s statements about the withdrawal of 4,000 Iranian fighters from Syria, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “These were the families of diplomats and employees of Iranian diplomatic, consular and cultural missions in Syria, Iranian visitors, and a number of non-Iranian visitors who came to Syria to provide assistance to the displaced Lebanese,” adding that “all of them traveled to Iran via Iranian planes via Hmeimim Airport in cooperation with Russia.” Baghaei continued, “Iran and Russia have important relations in various fields, and dialogues between them are ongoing at various levels.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday during his "Direct Line" event with citizens and his major annual press conference that 350 opposition fighters had entered Aleppo while 30,000 government and pro-Iranian troops had withdrawn without a fight, stressing that the ground forces fighting on the ground "were composed of the Syrian army and pro-Iranian groups." He added that Russia had organized the evacuation of 4,000 Iranian fighters from Syria at their request.

New Arab