Understanding Iran's Role in the Syrian Conflict

What should American Muslims understand about Iran's true objectives?

What was their objective to displace and to murder these people in

Syria?

I think that this can be summarized, like, very, very easily.

You know, what is, what was the Iranian position on the Arab

Spring?

Look at Egypt. It's a Sunni ruler. They support the overthrow of it.

Look at Libya. It's Gaddafi, and NATO is intervening, and they're supporting

it. Look at, uh, Tunisia. They support the overthrow of it.

Bahrain, they support it. They support it in Yemen.

They support the Arab Spring everywhere, in all of these different countries.

But when it comes to Syria, they're like, "No, we don't support this.

Ruler is a Shia there."

So it's a, it's a bit ironic. You have Khamenei, who's holding speeches,

talking

about how if the West wanted to truly support the Libyan

rebels, they should arm them with weapons. Khamenei, can you imagine that?

Like, Khamenei is saying that if, if the West

truly wanted to help the Libyan people, they should arm them with weapons.

But then he turns around and... He turns around to the Syrians, and then

he tells them, "Wait, you guys are actually a bunch of CIA agents.

You guys are actually a bunch of ISIS fighters." And this is funny

because you have, for example, you have IRGC commanders, like

Mahmoud Ch- Chahar Bakhshi. What does he say?

He says, "We were in, we were fighting in Syria

before ISIS came, before Jabhat al-Nusra was formed."

Because Jabhat al-Nusra was, was formed in January 2012.

It wasn't an active group before that.

It was present in Syria since maybe the summer of 2011, but it wasn't active

before early, uh, 2012, like, you know, overtly.

And he says, "We were fighting before they

were even there." Former Syrian defense

minister, he says Qasem Soleimani was in Syria from, from basically day one.

You have Hassan Nasrallah, who's giving an interview to Al Mayadeen.

He said, he says that, "We were in Syria after the victory of the

Egyptian

revolution. We set up an operations room in Iran.

We sat with, uh, Qasem Soleimani. We sat, ev- everyone sat there, and we decided,

'You know what? We're gonna get involved.'"

And you know what?

Like, they wanna frame this as, like, a, a anti-imperialist war in Syria. It's not.

Like, Hamas, from day one, they were in Syria.

They had headquarters in Syria, Hamas.

They had everything to lose in, in Syria.

But you know, you need, people need to understand th-

this history.

Like, Hassan Shibly spoke earlier about, like, Hama.

In Hama, you had what is known as, as the Muslim Brotherhood.

You know, the same guys that the UAE is chasing around every single day.

But I'm just saying, like, these are the same people.

They have the same interests, like the UAE and,

and the Assads in chasing these

Muslim Brotherhoods. They demonize them in the sa-

exact same way.

Hamas obviously has, like, this, this Muslim Brotherhood background.

And so when Hafez al-Assad in 1982 wipes

out Hama, kills all of these people, like, tens of thousands of people are killed

in Hama in the most ruthless way ever, and this is all public record.

Hamas obviously has this in its background and...

But for the sake of Palestine, Hamas is willing to overcome this.

And they say, "You know what? We'll work with anyone

that will give us anything.

It doesn't matter if you give us one dime.

We'll take it for the sake of, of Palestine. We have an enemy to fight.

That, that enemy is called the, the Israelis.

May God curse them." And, uh... But then the 2011, uh, revolution

happens. And you have Qardawi. And Qardawi, he's this

pro-unity scholar. He was calling for unity with the

Shia. He was pro-Hezbollah. He was saying, like, "Oh, you know," in the,

the 2006 war, he's like, "Oh, you know, we have to support Hezbollah."

And everyone

was supporting Hezbollah at that time. Most people were supporting Hezbollah.

But then what happens is in 2011 and 2012 is that Hezbollah starts to

intervene in Syria. And that's when the whole thing flips.

And then Qardawi comes out and say, "You know what?

You people who are against a unity, you were actually right, and I was

wrong to call for unity. Because we can see the consequence of it

now." And that's

the same thing. Like, Hassan Nasrallah is on record