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On February 17, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said during a conference on Islamic unity in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, that the resentence forces in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon will kick the US and its allies out from eastern Syria.
“The Americans and Zionists should know that as they were defeated in the Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, their illusions won’t materialize. The resistance front in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon will push them out of the eastern Euphrates,” Velayati said, according to the Iranian Press TV.
Velayati also accused the US and some Arab countries of working to divide Syria and said that the US is trying to tear down Muslim countries by establishing NATO bases inside them, in a clear hint to Syria and Iraq.
Khamenei’s advisor said that the US wants “a new Middle East whose reality will be marked by the disintegration of Muslim societies.”
Velayati called on the US to withdraw its troops from Syria on February 14 and said that its presence there is illegal. His statement came only days after US-led coalition warplanes bombed Iranian and Russian backed forces on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.
These statements prove that pushing the US out of Syria is currently one of the main goals of the Iranian foreign policy there. However, it is not clear how Iran would be able to achieve such a difficult task without provoking an escalation with the US and Israel in Syria.
