Tehran defends massive spending in Assad's Syria amid calls for restraint

The crossing, located at the border shared by Egypt, Israel, and Gaza, has come under scrutiny after Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), revealed that two recent convoys were looted by armed groups near the Gaza side of the crossing. Lazzarini called on Israel to uphold law and order in the area to ensure aid reaches its intended recipients.

Israel has accused Iran-backed Hamas of stealing aid destined for the population, around 2 million of whom have been displaced since the war which broke out on October 7 when Hamas invaded Israel.

Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for the Israeli military unit, The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, COGAT, which operates the crossing, flatly rejected the accusation. “I disagree with the premise that there is not enough food in Gaza,” he told Iran International during a recent visit to the area.

He said that the depot is full of food products and stressed that “the distribution capabilities of the international community is the biggest problem.”

Colonel Abdullah Halabi, who oversees the Gaza division of COGAT, said aid delivery is a problem of logistics, saying there is a need for more trucks and managers.

"Today we have more than 800 truckloads that are waiting for the international community to take them and deliver them to the people inside Gaza," said Halabi, who added that often merchandise is warehoused at the depot for lengthy periods because of the lack of international delivery capabilities.

But critics point out that as the military force controlling the area, Israel has the obligation to ensure safety of convoys that are often looted, allegedly by Hamas gunmen.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, blamed Israel for the lawlessness on the Gaza side of the crossing, meaning aid needed for the population is being stolen. Lazzarini said, “The responsibility of protection of aid workers and supplies is with the State of Israel as the occupying power,” adding. “They must ensure aid flows into Gaza safely and must refrain from attacks on humanitarian workers.”

The delivery of goods into Gaza has been a source of friction between the Biden administration and Israel’s government. In October, the US government threatened to sanction Israel, including slashing its military aid, if the humanitarian situation in Gaza failed to improve.

Many Republican lawmakers aligned with president-elect Donald Trump slammed Biden’s threat. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) wrote on X: “The United States should have no part in providing aid to Gaza for the same reason the US didn’t provide aid to Nazi Germany. Aiding Gaza will only prolong the rule of Hamas.”

Iran International observed vast crates of apples, bananas, pasta, green peas, corn, dishwashing liquid, baby supplies, water and other goods with many trucks arriving to offload and deliver goods.

The overstocked depot at Kerem Shalom does not mean that there is not a food shortage in Gaza, argue critics of Israel.

On November 26, 40 trucks went into the Gaza Strip, carrying over 600 tons of flour to support the operation of the WFP bakeries in the southern Gaza Strip. WFP also collected 52 food trucks through the Erez West crossing, for distribution in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israel has accused UNRWA of participation in the attacks of October 7 in which over 1,000 people were murdered and more than 250 taken hostage.

When approached by Iran International, a UNRWA spokesperson in Jordan declined to comment about the aid going into Gaza.

Hamas’ spokesman Bassem Naim did not respond to an Iran International WhatsApp press query. The US Treasury Department sanctioned Naim in November.

"Hamas continues to rely on key officials who seemingly maintain legitimate, public-facing roles within the group, yet who facilitate their terrorist activities, represent their interests abroad, and coordinate the transfer of money and goods into Gaza," said Bradley T. Smith, acting under-secretary for the Treasury on terrorism and financial intelligence.

Ultra-hardliners who refer to themselves as 'arzeshi' or guardians of Islamic Republic's values were venting their frustrations against Esmail Qaani in closed groups such as the homegrown Eitaa cast platform and on Telegram.

“Why doesn’t anyone say anything? Why were Iran Air’s flights to Damascus and Iraq to Damascus halted? Why was the Lebanese border to Syria blocked? Why didn’t they let us go there [to fight]?” one user wrote, asking why has the Quds (Qods) Force - the regional spear of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards had not acted or spoken up.

Deploying the hashtags Qaani and Quds Force on Tuesday, another user snapped: “Leaders of Hezbollah were martyred, the Axis of Resistance withdrew from Syria, yet no one heard anything from the Quds Force commander."

Others pointed out that Qaani was not present at the Parliament’s closed meeting with the Revolutionary Guards’ Commander-in-chief General Hossein Salami on Thursday and wondered whether he had been dismissed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Qaani has been seen in public only rarely since October.

Commentators at the time viewed his absence as a sign of possible disfavor given huge setbacks dealt to Hezbollah by Israel including the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah alongside a top Quds force commander.

The last time Qaani appeared was at a mourning ceremony on the death anniversary of Prophet Mohammad's daughter, Fatima, at Khamenei’s residence on Dec. 7. Iranian media noted that Qaani appeared in civilian clothing, unlike other military commanders at the ceremony.

Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces and foreign militias such as the Fatemiyoun and Zeynabiyoun brigades were deeply involved in defending Assad during Syria’s civil war for over a decade.

In a speech on Wednesday about recent developments in the region, Khamenei accused the United States and Israel of orchestrating the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

Unusually, state television did not give live coverage of the speech and only aired two excerpts as the Islamic Republic faced some of the biggest blows to its regional influence in its near half-century existence.

Assad’s fall has presented a serious challenge to commentators who claim to be guardians of so-called Islamic revolutionary values on how to interpret the events but steer clear of questioning the system's ultimate ruler Khamenei.

Most have directed their ire toward the country’s military institutions according to a commentary titled in part, “Has the Revolutionary Current Lost Its Trust in the Military?” by the relatively independent Rouydad24 news website on Thursday.

“With the fall of Damascus and the end of Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria, groups in cyberspace which until now interpreted the equations in the Middle East in Iran's favor are facing an analytic crisis and blaming parts of (the Iranian) government,” the commentary added, noting that many among the arzeshi groups are silent “mostly because they do not dare to speak openly” about the matter.

Iranian authorities have stepped up censorship after Assad’s ouster.

Iran's Attorney General’s Office on Thursday warned media outlets and online activists to avoid discussions of the downfall of Tehran's ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria that could undermine domestic security. Iranian media on Thursday reported that the judiciary has indicted at least eight commentators, journalists, and activists in relation to their social media comments in this relation.

“Woman, Life, Freedom is the future of Iran,” Netanyahu said, echoing the slogan that gained international prominence during 2022 protests in Iran against mandatory Islamic veiling.

"I have no doubt that we’ll realize that future together a lot sooner than people think.”

The video is the latest of a series of messages posted on Netanyahu’s account on X in recent months aimed apparently at wooing Iranians and fanning the flames of their discontent with their clerical rulers who are Israel's arch-enemies.

Netanyahu emphasized Iran’s largesse for armed allies abroad while millions at home suffer economic hardship.

“Your oppressors spent over $30 billion supporting Assad in Syria, and only after 11 days of fighting his regime collapsed into dust,” Netanyahu said. “You must be furious, imagining the new roads, schools, hospitals that could have been built with the tens of billions of dollars your dictators wasted backing terrorists who lose over and over and over again.”

Netanyahu’s remarks come shortly after the collapse of the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad. Assad was Tehran’s main ally in the region and the ripples of his fall are strongly felt in Iran.

On Monday, he took credit for Assad's downfall and said the Jewish state has overcome doubters of its war aims to dismantle the Mideast-wide axis led by Iran.

"If we were to agree to those who said time after time, we must stop the war ... we wouldn't have exposed Iran in its weakness," he told reporters in a speech. "(We) broke apart this axis, brick by brick."

Iran's exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi re-tweeted Netanyahu's message, praising his initiative to directly address the Iranian people. "Prime Minister @netanyahu's direct, repeated dialogue with the Iranian people is a positive step...I invite other world leaders, instead of engaging in useless negotiations with the criminal regime, to engage the Iranian nation directly," he wrote.

Meanwhile Iran's judiciary warned critics of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy to avoid discussions of the downfall of Assad that could undermine domestic security.

“Media and online activists in the country should refrain from addressing topics that disrupt the psychological security of society and frighten the public about the situation,” the office of Iran’s Attorney General said on Wednesday.

The statement followed a speech by supreme leader Ali Khamenei who characterized talks of Iran’s weakening position in the Middle East as criminal.

"I think it was a terrible idea for many reasons," Trump's former special representative for Iran and veteran foreign policy hawk Elliot Abrams told Iran International in an interview.

"First of all, it's a kind of signal of wanting to negotiate, which I think it was wrong to send now ... and to send through Musk. I with all due respect, I take him to be a business genius. But that doesn't mean he knows a lot about diplomacy."

Musk met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani in New York on Nov. 11 to discuss ways to defuse tensions between the two countries, according to a report by the New York Times.

Two Iranian officials, who spoke to the paper on condition of anonymity, described the meeting which lasted just over an hour, as “positive” and “good news.”

Musk and a Trump spokesperson did not respond to request for comment at the time and Iran's Foreign Ministry promptly denied it occurred, dismissing it as media sensationalism by American outlets.

Asked about the alleged encounter, president-elect Trump said in an interview with Time magazine published on Thursday he had no knowledge of it. "I don't know that he met with them," he was quoted as saying. "I don't know. He didn't tell me that."

"I make the assumption that Trump knew about it," Abrams said before the Time interview was published. "It's a big deal and I don't think Musk would have done it and kind of sprung it on the president and said, hey, guess what I did yesterday?"

"That's an important meeting. What is the record of that meeting that we, the Americans, have? We don't have any record of the meeting. I mean, know, Musk is not trained at this," Abrams added. "He's not trained at remembering the details. Did he have a note-taker with him?"

"A real diplomat, you would have had a note taker writing it all down. I assume the Iranians recorded the meeting. So they've got it, probably, word for word ... Musk is unquestionably a brilliant person, but that doesn't mean he knows what he's doing in a diplomatic meeting."

The shock exit of President Bashar al-Assad from the country his family has ruled for half a century deprived Iran of one of its oldest and most stalwart allies.

Damascus was a key bridge in a so-called Shi'ite crescent which projected Iran's influence over Iraq and Syria to its armed Lebanese allies Hezbollah.

Iranian, Hezbollah and Iraqi militia forces had been a key bulwark for Assad in his fight against armed rebels which spectacularly faltered in a shock offensive which seized the capital on Sunday after less than a fortnight.

Those foreign units were Assad's top asset, Reuters cited the regional sources as saying, and Iranian military advisors and the militias ran the operational command structure that defended the Syrian state.

Many of the Iranian advisers quit Syria following Israeli air strikes on the capital in the spring and the rest left as the insurgent thrust gained steam last week, Reuters reported citing Iraqi militia commanders.

A source familiar with Hezbollah thinking was cited as saying fighters from the group had mostly left the country in October to confront an Israeli air and ground assault at home.

Alone, the Syrian military lacked a coherent strategy to defend their lines especially around the northwestern city of Aleppo - the country's second largest - which fell rapidly to radical Islamist-led rebels with little fighting.

US sanctions, mismanagement and corruption had taken its toll on the Syrian economy and military for years, undermining morale and willingness to fight.

Many rank-and-file soldiers and officers simply discarded their uniforms and weapons as opposition fighters made gains and melted into the civilian population.

For years before the government's ouster on Wednesday, monitoring groups reported that the Syrian military had been reduced to a militia-style organization focused on repression and was less prepared for a conventional military campaign.