The civil war in Syria was the result of a plot by Israel, several Arab states, and the United States, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in an interview translated and published by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Speaking with Iran's Al-Alam television on Dec. 24, Maliki, who served as Iraqi premier from 2006-2014, said the Syrian regime's fall "would not have meant the end of the story, but only the beginning." Its collapse would have been followed by an invasion by Al-Nusra Front and Al-Qaida terrorists, "and Israel would also enter the picture," said Maliki.
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This in turn would have sparked a "major regional crisis," he added, which Iraq had been prepared to send its army to Syria in order to prevent.
Referring to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the former Iraqi premier said, "So the stance of Hajj Qassem Soleimani, along with the mujahadeen who rose up and fought in Syria … we all rose up. I am not afraid to say that we rose up and said: 'If we see that the Syrian regime might fall, we will take the Iraqi army and fight in Syria, because the fall of the regime in Damascus will spread the turmoil throughout the region.'"
Maliki went on to say that it was Soleimani who had spearheaded that effort and that it was for this reason he was assassinated by the United States on Jan. 3 in Baghdad.
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"Hajj Qassem led the way in preventing the collapse of the Syrian regime, and he played a similar role in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. So it was only natural that the United States should target Hajj Qassem Soleimani, because, to put it simply, he was destroying their plans," he said.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
