Head of Revolutionary Guards: Iran will live with new ‘realities’ in post-Assad Syria

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards says the country has to live with the new “realities” of Syria after the ouster of Tehran-backed president Bashar al-Assad.

Regarding Syria, Iran “was really trying day and night to help in whatever way it could; we have to live with the realities of Syria; we look at them and act based on them,” Hossein Salami says, according to the official IRNA news agency.

“Strategies must change according to the circumstances; we cannot solve numerous global and regional issues with stagnation and employing the same tactics,” he adds.

Iran has been a strong ally of the Assad family, whose decades-long rule of Syria ended over the weekend when a whirlwind rebel offensive took the capital Damascus.

Assad had long played a strategic role in Iran’s anti-Israel “axis of resistance,” particularly in facilitating the supply of weapons to Tehran’s ally Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.

The axis of resistance includes Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi rebels in Yemen and some smaller Shia militia groups in Iraq.

Separately, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps strongly condemns “the abuse of the current instability in Syria by the US and the Zionist regime,” which is Iran’s term for Israel.

“The Resistance Front will not be passive in confronting any plan or scheme that seeks to disrupt the resistance and weaken the power and authority of the countries in the region,” the Revolutionary Guards says in a statement.