“The presence in Syria by such countries as the US and Saudi Arabia, who intervene there without the Syrian government’s consent, is illegal,” Velayati said in an article published by Iran Daily on August 14.
“Making decisions as to Syria’s future is up to Syrian people,” he said, adding, “Others are disallowed to meddle in Syria’s internal affairs.”
Following the same party line as Assad, it is plain to see that when Velayati says that “decisions as to Syria’s future” should be made by the Syrian people alone, he is not referring to all of Syria’s people.
Beginning in 2011 it became obvious to many outsiders that the majority of Syria’s population were more than ready to be rid of Assad and his corrupt and brutal regime.
It was not foreigners who poured into the streets of Syria’s cities demanding that Assad step down; it was Syrians.
It was also Syrians who were being killed by Assad’s snipers as they risked their lives to prove to him that they had indeed made a decision about Syria’s future and were willing to die for it.
In reality, Assad would not still be in power if the Syrian people had been left to follow through on their collective decision to choose their own leader.
Several times since 2011 the ill-equipped opposition forces, that began with defected SAA soldiers and regular civilians determined to protect their families and their homes, came close to defeating Assad’s ‘elite’ units who are “more adept at stealing from United Nations humanitarian convoys than anything else” to quote Frederic C. Hof in The World Post.
If it were not for the help of the Iranian supported Hezbollah militias from Lebanon, as well as the Iranian Guard and militias of Afghani refugees sent by Iran, Assad would have been unceremoniously dethroned by the Syrian people who had decided they wanted a future without him.
Yet even with the help of foreign militias, Assad was close to defeat last year until he asked Putin to send the Russian air force to help his friend from being forced out of his daddy’s chair.
Saudi Arabia and the US have been accused by Iranian media of “providing lavish financial and ideological support for the terrorists operating in Syria”; while Iran and Russia have provided those things and more to the terrorist Assad regime.
Ideologically Assad and his allies have chosen to be myopic in their definition of ‘the Syrian people’.
According to them, the only legitimate Syrians who have a right to make decisions about Syria’s future are those who support Assad – the spurious dictator who insists that he instituted the asked for government reforms in 2012 yet has never once held a truly democratic election.
Assad has also declared that all ‘expats’, refugees and opposition members who have left Syria are no longer Syrians and have no right to make any decisions regarding Syria’s future. The fact that he deliberately drove millions to leave with his barrel bombs and starvation sieges does not come into play in the minds of him or his supporters.
Likewise the fact that he is telling his ‘expat’ supporters in Kuwait that they will play a big role in rebuilding a new Syria, after his genocidal campaign comes to and end, does not appear to be the least bit hypocritical to him – or his cronies.
It is within his ‘sovereign’ rights to invite foreigners to help him kill legitimate Syrians and to promise to give those same foreign fighters land that was stolen from Syrians he has driven out – but it is ‘illegal’ for those Syrians who do not recognize him as their legitimate leader to receive help from their own friends.
As for US involvement in the coalition fighting ISIS, when US bombs were dropped on Jan killing many civilians in Aleppo and Idlib, Assad had no problem with the coalition’s intervention.
And contrary to what the article in Iran Daily has to say, the coalition has been successful in containing ISIS in Iraq and northern Syria.
But perhaps that is the real heart of the problem that Assad and Velayati have with the ‘illegal’ presence of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. in Syria.
We have long known that Assad is not focused on getting rid of ISIS.
After all, he has encouraged its growth and was more than happy to allow them to keep opposition fighters busy in northern Syria.
Their presence becomes more ‘illegal’ as the Syrian opposition becomes freer to focus on opening humanitarian corridors to besieged areas as they have recently done in Aleppo.
The people Assad insists on calling ‘terrorists” – who are first and foremost legitimate Syrian citizens – are not surrendering in droves as he had hoped they would.
In spite of all the ‘legal’ foreign interventionists he has invited to kill Syrians and force them into submission, they are still refusing to bow.
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