MESOP : ALEVI BASHAR AND A SHIA AJATOLLAH Khamenei envoy: Assad’s fall threatens Shiites / Ayatollah Mojtaba Hosseini defended Tehran’s involvement in Syria in dramatically sectarian terms

BEIRUT – 19 June 2015 NowMedia -The representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Syria defended Tehran’s involvement in the country’s civil war in dramatically sectarian terms, saying the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime would threaten the region’s Shiites.

Ayatollah Motjaba Hosseini gave an interview to Raja News—an outlet close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards—in which he said Tehran’s growing military role in Syria aimed to counter an “existential threat.” “When we participate today in the ongoing war in Syria… it is to resist those who want to eliminate the Tehran-Damascus axis and [threaten] Iran’s interests,” he told the Iranian newspaper, according to a translation prepared Wednesday by Iraqi Kurdish Bas News. The Iranian official—who has worked in Syria for the past 11 years—also refused to acknowledge any difference between the insurgent groups active in the Syrian civil war.

“The armed groups which moved against the Syrian government are all takfiris, and there is no difference between Al-Nusra Front, the Free Syrian Army and ISIS.”Hosseini further claimed that “all of them pose a threat and existential danger to the Shiites of the region, and for this reason the Shiites have moved to defend Syria and confront this threat.”He added that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to the annihilation of Shiites, according to Bas News.The Iranian official also touted the role played by Khamenei’s Syria office, which he runs, saying it “used to work to [recruit] Shiites to defend the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine in Damascus. However, the situation changed with the arrival of large numbers of volunteers.”

“The office came to represent hope for Shiites in Syria, that paramilitary units would be formed to confront the Takfiris,” Hosseini was quoted as saying in the original report.Hosseini’s comments come as Iran—Syria’s main backer in the region—has purportedly doubled down its military support for the Syrian regime.AFP on June 3 cited an unnamed Syrian security source as saying that “around 7,000 Iranian and Iraqi fighters have arrived in Syria over the past few weeks.”The day before, pro-Assad Lebanese daily As-Safir said that Iran was mustering over 20,000 Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese fighters in the Idlib area to press a counterattack against rebel forces that have overrun the province.Iran, for its part, denied on Wednesday that it had sent any troops to Syria, calling the reports “unfounded.”Meanwhile, a high-ranking general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards last week called for Iranian volunteers to fight in Syria while stressing that Khamenei has not yet decided to dispatch regular army troops to the war-torn country. The frenzied reports of Iran bolstering its armed presence in Syria were sparked by IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani’s recent trip to the country, after which he vowed “the world will be surprised by what we and the Syrian military leadership are preparing for the coming days.” https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565447-khamenei-envoy-assads-fall-threatens-shiites