US Entered Syria With Eye on Iran

A senior Iranian commander said the United States started interfering in Syria as a first stage to make a chain of successive inroads into the Middle East, with its sights set on the Islamic Republic as the final destination.

Lieutenant General Hossein Salami, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps's second-in-command, said in a recent televised interview that Syria was the first stage in a scenario meant to circumscribe Iran's regional influence by gradually approaching its borders and entangling the country in a crisis, Press TV reported.

Syria has been experiencing foreign-backed militancy since 2011. The US, Turkey and some Persian Gulf Arab countries, primarily Saudi Arabia, have been providing ideological, political and financial support to the militants operating to oust the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington and dozens of its allies launched an air campaign in Syria in 2014 with the purported goal of eliminating the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group, which they have failed to dislodge.

Salami highlighted the defeats of foreign-backed militants in Syria's strategic northwestern city of Aleppo, saying the US and its allies failed in the initial phase of the scenario aimed at undermining Iran as a regional player.

If successful, the scenario would have eliminated Syria, one of Tehran's allies and main supporters of the anti-Israeli resistance movement in the region.

Salami said Washington showed up in Syria to undercut the resistance drive, depose the Syrian administration and partition the Arab country before heading to Lebanon and Iraq, and eventually reaching Iran.

"If the push had yielded results, Washington would have restored its dominance in the region," he said.

"Aleppo's liberation, however, reversed US fortunes and put its policy in a nosedive.

Salami noted that the latest gains by the Syrian Army also gave a drubbing to the Saudis and Israelis who likewise strongly contest Assad's leadership.

"Although the victory in Aleppo is limited to the boundaries of a city when looked at in a physical and geographical light, but it is absolutely a development of international repercussions given its political and strategic aspects, which considerably affect the sphere of the influence of great powers," he declared.