The end of Aleppo battle resembled a new step for Iran in its plan to control the region is done. Iran’s regime policy relies on prohibiting any opposition movement inside its own borders, and expansion policy out based on sectarian base in the region.
The authorities severely curtailed the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly, arresting and imprisoning journalists, human rights defenders, trade unionists and others who voiced dissent, on vague and overly broad charges.
In the region, Iran also sought to expand its influence by supporting sectarian militias in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, supporting political figures who implement its goals and deploying direct military intervention in these lands.
This policy was most obvious in Syria.
By the summer of 2015, President Assad seemed on the verge of being overthrown. Then Russia launched its military intervention, and Iran increased the number of its forces in Syria tilting the ride of war in Assad regime’s favor.
The Assad regime forces, backed by Russian air power, Iranian ground forces and Shi’ite militia fighters from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, has been tightening its grip on rebel-held districts of Aleppo since the start of this year.
After months of crippling siege, starvation policy, daily bombardment, fierce clashes and bloody massacres the Assad regime and its allies were able to oblige the rebels in Aleppo to surrender and make a ceasefire agreement to leave the area they have been holding since 2012 after losing more than 90% of it.
More than 1500 civilians died in the military offensive in Aleppo since September.
Iran and the Assad regime did not want to compromise on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, believing that total domination will give them a better hand to shape the aftermath.
The Iranian regime said that Aleppo’s fall is an important victory for their forces, and would not have been achieved without them.
“Aleppo was liberated thanks to a coalition between Iran, Syria, Russia and Lebanon’s Hizbollah,” said Yahya Rahim-Safavi, Ali Khamenei’s chief military said.
“Iran is on one side of this coalition which is approaching victory and this has shown our strength.”
Political prisoners send letter of support
As both the oppressed Iranian civilians and the Syrian civilians are victims of the Iranian regime, a group of political prisoners in Karaj – western Tehran wrote a letter condemned the crimes committed by the Iranian regime and its mercenaries in Syria. The letter also expressed their prisoners’ solidarity with people in Aleppo.
Having spent years of our lives in prison, we prisoners are quite familiar with the nature of turning the truth upside down by the regime’s media, but you could easily find out about the crimes committed in Aleppo even amidst the regime’s distorted and censored news.
From inside the prison, we tell the hero of a city, Aleppo, which heroically sustained 15 months of bombing, and to each and every one of our unseen dearest women, men and children of Aleppo: your endurance, fight, and resistance despite all pain and suffering, was a new model for ‘determination to take control of one’s destiny. The destiny which changed the regional and global balance of power with its signs already emerging and its unbelievable fruits sure to come.
Although we are in captivity and subject to the retaliation by those same people who are killing you, and, ironically, despite being held captive in our own home, Iran, for the same reason, you have been slaughtered at yours. Please accept our sympathy and know that we are standing by your side. The interventions by the so-called Iranian leaders are condemned as war crimes by not only any noble, liberal Iranian but also by any ‘global citizen’.
Looking back at the protests by students and youth in the United States during the Vietnam war as well as the protests held by French students and people against France’s intervention in Algeria, and together with youth in Ahwaz and all the enlightened and courageous Iranian students, we yell from the depths of prison: we are all with you, Aleppo.
