Speaking in a message to the Tuesday session of the Islamic Jurisprudence Assembly of students at Azahari university in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the US and Israel were “completely wrong” to believe that a Tehran-backed axis of resistance had been defeated after President Bashar al-Assad was removed from Syria. Khamenei spoke after a Syrian government in Damascus collapsed Sunday when a rebel offensive captured the Syrian capital on Dec. 8.
In a televised address, Khamenei framed the collapse of Assad in terms of larger regional conflicts but again pointed specifically to Israel and the United States’s part in the violence, continuing to criticize both countries for their “crimes” by stating that their expectation about the collapse of resistance is false.
The fall of the Syrian government represents a major shift in the region, but Khamenei stressed that it will not weaken Iran’s influence. He dismissed the notion that the loss of Assad’s regime would diminish Iran’s position in the Middle East, instead claiming that the resistance movement remains intact.
Khamenei also commented on the effect of the current Gaza conflict where, since the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group on October 7, 2023, Hamas and Hezbollah have experienced defeat. However, he claimed that Israel would lose anyway and said, “The one who will be eradicated is Israel.”
Now, after the departure of Bashar Assad, Iran has distanced itself from the former leader in Syria and instead emphasized that the two countries have always maintained long-standing relations, unaffected by the changing political context in Syria.
