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| Massacre in Syria, so where are the demonstrations, boycotts and flotillas? |
By Elad Benari
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani warned on Wednesday against the devastating consequences of a Libyan-style intervention in Syria.
According to a report in the Iranian-based Fars news agency, Larijani said that a policy of intervention in Syria would spread to “the occupied Palestinian territories” and would harm Israel.
Noting the recent remarks by U.S. and Western officials on Syria, Larijani was quoted as having said, “It seems that the U.S. and the West are seeking to prepare the ground for a new crisis (in Syria), since a UN military official has said that they may take military action in Syria as they did in Libya.”
He went on to warn about the negative outcomes of such a move and noted, “Possibly, the U.S. military officials are suffering a misunderstanding over themselves and over the regional issues because Syria's specifications are no way similar to those of Libya.”
Larijani warned that foreign intervention in Syria “will spread into (the occupied) Palestine and the ashes of such flame will definitely bury the Zionist regime (of Israel).”
Fars reported that the came after the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, warned Syria that it might face armed intervention.
“'There is always a military option,” Dempsey was quoted as having told Fox News.
On Tuesday, French President Francois Hollande said that military action in Syria could be possible, but only if it was backed by a UN resolution.
Larijani’s warnings came a day after Iran tried to displace the blame on Israel for Syrian President Bashar Assad's campaign of terror against his people, and its backlash.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast pointed the finger at “the Zionist regime's hand” in a statement to media about Syrian government attacks on residents in the Houla region.
“We palpably feel the Zionist regime's hand in Syria's internal developments,” Mehman-Parast said, adding that the only side that might gain from Syria's instability would be Israel, saying that “any crime committed [in Syria] can be traced back to the regime's hirelings.”
The central area of Houla saw one of the bloodiest single events in Syria's growing civil war on Friday. U.N. human rights officials on Tuesday said most of the 108 victims of a massacre in Syria last week were shot at close range “execution style,” and accused pro-Assad thugs of carrying out the murders. The massacre on Friday in Houla – which included 34 women, 49 children, and in some cases entire families – generated new international outrage.
Following the massacre, UN envoy Kofi Annan visited Syria to hold talks with Assad, but he reportedly left Damascus on Wednesday without securing any major steps from the Syrian government to implement his faltering peace plan.
