Israel says Iran has itself to blame for Assad's fall
Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz rebuffed on Wednesday Iranian accusation of a U.S.-Israeli "plot" to oust Syria's Bashar al-Assad, saying Tehran has itself to blame for the fall of its ally.
Katz, on a tour of the Jordanian border with military commanders, accused arch rival Iran of trying to establish an "eastern front" against Israel in the neighboring kingdom, and vowed to prevent it.
Earlier on Wednesday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Assad's ouster this week by Islamist-led rebels "is the product of a joint U.S.-Israeli plot," also blaming another unnamed "neighboring state of Syria."
Katz, according to a statement from his office, said that Khamenei "should blame himself" and stop financing armed groups "in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza to build the octopus arms he leads in an attempt to defeat the State of Israel."
"I came here today to ensure that Iran will not succeed in building the octopus arm that it is planning and working to establish here, in order to create an eastern front against the State of Israel," he said.
Katz suggested Iran was behind "attempts to smuggle weapons" into the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which borders Jordan, as well as to "fund terrorism and promote" it.
The defense minister said he had instructed the army "to increase offensive operations against any terrorist activity" in the West Bank, and to "accelerate the construction of the fence on the Israel-Jordan border."
Damascus under Assad's rule had long been a strategic part of Iran's "Axis of Resistance" against Israel, primarily in facilitating weapons deliveries to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Other Iran-backed groups in the region include Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Houthi rebels in Yemen and smaller Shiite Muslim militia groups in Iraq.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed Assad's overthrow, following a lightning rebel offensive that began in late November, as the fall of a "central link in Iran's axis of evil."
He called it "a direct result of the blows we have inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah," Tehran's Lebanese ally which fought Israel throughout the Gaza war and until a ceasefire took effect on November 27 -- the day the Syrian rebels launched their offensive.
Source: Agence France Presse
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