Iran has sent its troops to help the regime of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fight opposition forces, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has said.
“Before our presence in Syria, too many people were killed by the opposition but with the physical and non-physical presence of the Islamic republic, big massacres in Syria were prevented,” said Ismail Gha’ani, deputy head of the Quds force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guards in charge of overseas operations.
Gha’ani said this in an interview with the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA), RIA Novosti reported.
According to the Persian-language GozaraNews website, ISNA published the interview Sunday night but subsequently removed it from its website “under pressure”.
But after only a few hours of being published on the ISNA’s website, the quote was removed without any explanation.
Gen. Qa’ani’s statement was however still picked up by international media outlets online.
Some analysts say that his published statement was merely a slip-up, although it bears some truth.
“I think what he said was not studied, he didn’t consult with his superiors, it just came out of his mouth in an occasion when he shouldn’t have said something about Iranian participation in Syria,” said Alireza Nourizadeh, the director of the Centre for Arab & Iranian Studies in London.
The statement had come at a tense time in Syria, following the killing of at least 108 people, including many children, in Houla, a neighborhood in the embattled province of Homs.
The massacre has drawn international condemnation from the United Nations, the United States, Britain, Germany and France, while the Arab League called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.
“But what he [Qa’ani] has said is true; the uprising would have been bloodier had Iran not participated. Syria had the Quds force on its side,” Nourizadeh added.
“The Quds used their intelligence networks to train the Syrian army how to fight people without killing; how to use force to cause injury, without being accused of a massacre.
“The Syrian army was not well trained. Iranians also went to Syria as experts on cyber warfare, teaching them how to control websites and social media and how to jam television channels,” said Nourizadeh.
After Qa’ani’s controversial statement was removed, Iran on Monday condemned killings in Houla, blaming them on “terrorist actions” rather than its Damascus ally and calling for the perpetrators to be punished.
Iran “condemns the terrorist actions in the Houla area in Homs in Syria. The killing of a number of innocent people in the area has distressed the Islamic nations,” the foreign ministry said in a statement relayed by official media.
It denounced the “suspect act” and urged authorities “to identify and punish those responsible.”
Syria is Iran’s most important regional ally, and Tehran has long used its neighbour’s territory as a base for operations to maintain a lifeline to militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza respectively, RIA Novosti said.
Rumours that Iran has been providing military support to Assad to assist his crackdown on the uprising that has challenged his family’s 40-year grip on power, have been circulating since the protests began in March 2011.