At a recent soccer match in Tehran between the two countries’ teams, Syrian and Iranian fans began shouting invectives at each other, highlighting the fact that, despite their governments’ close alliance, the two peoples share little mutual affection. Amir Taheri notes the feebleness of the Iranian regime’s efforts to explain to its populace why it is involved in Syria:
The initial [explanation] provided by the Khomeinist authorities was that Iran is fighting in Syria to prevent the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which had been an ally during the war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980s and is now a member of the “Resistance Front” led by Iran.
That . . . . failed to convince many people, even within the regime’s base. Then another reason was cited: Iran was fighting in Syria to prevent the destruction of Shiite holy shrines. Official media published lists of such shrines, sometimes with photographs.
But that, too, was challenged by “troublemakers” who picked holes in the regime’s shaky claims. More than 90 percent of Syrian “Shiite holy sites” turned out to be burial places of ancient Jewish prophets or Sunni Muslim theologians and scholars. . . .
[Furthermore], a closer look at Syrian realities shows that the Russo-Irano-Turkish scheme [to divide the country into spheres of influence] is doomed to fail. From what I know of Syria, a country I have observed and visited since 1970, despite almost seven years of tragedy, the sense of “Syrian-ness” is still strong enough to frustrate putative imperial appetites. . . .
Syria is not Lebanon, where Shiites, accounting for a third of the population, have always looked to Iran as a protector. Tehran’s attempts to cast Syrian Alawites, [the ruling religious groups], as “almost Shiites,” and thus deserving the same “protection” as Lebanese Shiites, have failed. Not a single ayatollah has agreed to cancel the countless historic fatwas that castigate Alawites as “heretics” or even crypto-Zoroastrians.
Read more on Asharq al-Awsat: https://english.aawsat.com/amir-taheri/opinion/iran-plan-syria-will-fail