Iran’s top-ranking general in Syria contradicted the official position taken by Iranian leaders on the sudden fall of its ally Bashar al-Assad, saying in an extremely frank speech last week that Iran had suffered a major defeat but would continue to try to operate in the country.

Audio recording of the speech given last week by Brig. Gene. Behrouz Esbati in a mosque in Tehran, appeared publicly on Monday in the Iranian media, and was a sharp contrast to the statements of the Iranian president, foreign minister and other top leaders. For weeks, they played down the magnitude of Iran’s strategic loss in Syria last month, when rebels overthrew Mr. al-Assad from power, and said that Iran would respect any political outcome decided by the Syrian people.

“I don’t consider the loss of Syria something to be proud of,” General Esbati said, according to an audio recording of his speech, which Media servant, a Geneva-based news site focused on Iran, published on Monday. “We were defeated, and very hard, we received a big blow and it was very difficult.”

General Esbati revealed that Iran’s relations with Mr al-Assad had been strained in the months leading up to his ouster, saying the Syrian leader had rejected multiple requests for Iranian-backed militias to open a front against Israel from Syria, following a Hamas-led attack on October 7. in 2023

Iran is Mr. presented al-Assad with comprehensive military plans on how he could use Iran’s military resources in Syria to attack Israel, he said.

The general also accused Russia, considered a major ally, of misleading Iran by telling it that Russian planes were bombing Syrian rebels when they were actually dropping bombs on open fields. He also said that over the past year, while Israel has been attacking Iranian targets in Syria, Russia has “turned off its radars,” effectively facilitating these attacks.

For more than a decade, Iran has supported Mr al-Assad by sending commanders and troops to help him fight opposition rebels and the Islamic State terrorist group.

Under Mr. al-Assad, Syria was Iran’s regional command center from which it supplied arms and money to its network of regional militias, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants in the West Bank. Iran also controlled airports, warehouses and operated missile and drone production bases in Syria.

The rebel coalition has now taken over much of Syria and is trying to form a governmentt. General Esbati said in his speech that Iran will look for ways to recruit rebels in whatever form the new Syria takes.

“We can activate all the networks we’ve worked with over the years,” he said. “We can activate the social layers among which our boys have lived for years; we can be active in social media and we can form resistance cells.”

He added: “Now we can operate there as we do in other international arenas, and we have already started.”

The general’s comments stunned Iranians, both because of their unfiltered content and because of the speaker’s stature. He is the commander-in-chief of Iran’s armed forces, an umbrella that includes the army and the Revolutionary Guards, with a record of distinguished roles including commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces’ cyber division.

In Syria, he oversaw Iran’s military operations and coordinated closely with Syrian ministers and defense officials and with Russian generals — even surpassing the top commander of the Quds Force, General Ismail Ghaani, who oversees a network of Iranian-backed regional militias.

Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent analyst in Tehran and an expert on Syria, said in a telephone interview that General Esbati’s speech was significant because it showed that some senior officials were breaking away from government propaganda and leveling with the public.

“Everyone is talking about the speech in the meetings and wondering why he said those things, especially in a public forum,” Mr Rahmati said. “He made it very clear what happened to Iran and where it is now. In a way, it can be a warning for domestic politics.”

General Esbati said the fall of the Assad regime was inevitable given the rampant corruption, political oppression and economic difficulties people were facing, from lack of electricity, fuel to livable income. He said Mr al-Assad had ignored warnings to reform. Mr Rahmati, the analyst, said the comparison with the current situation in Iran was hard to miss.

Despite the general’s claims of activating the networks, it remains unclear what Iran can realistically do in Syria, given the public and political opposition it has faced in the country and the challenges of land and air access. Israel has warned that it will decimate any Iranian efforts it discovers on the ground in Syria.

And while Iran has experience with operated in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003 — including seeding unrest — Syria’s geography and political landscape are vastly different, presenting more challenges.

An Iranian member of the Revolutionary Guard who spent years in Iraq as a military strategist alongside senior commanders said in a telephone interview that General Esbati’s comments about Iran’s recruitment of insurgents may be more aspirational than practical at this stage. He said General Esbati had conceded a serious defeat but also sought to boost morale and appease conservatives who had demanded Iran act more forcefully.

The Guards official, who asked that his name not be used because he was discussing sensitive topics, said the Iran policy had not yet been finalized, but that a consensus had emerged in meetings he attended where strategy was discussed. He said Iran will benefit if Syria descends into chaos because Iran knows how to thrive and secure its interests in a turbulent landscape.

In Iran, the Revolutionary Guard has the authority to determine regional policy and run the foreign ministry.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on key state issues, has said in at least two speeches since the fall of Mr. al-Assad that the resistance is not dead in Syria, adding that Syrian youth will reclaim their country from the ruling rebels, whom he has called puppets. Israel and the United States. President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi were more conciliatory, saying they were in favor of stability in Syria and diplomatic ties with the new government.

The tensions that surround them competing views on Syria have preoccupied officials enough that they embarked on a damage control campaign with the public last week. Senior military commanders and experts close to the government gave speeches and held question-and-answer sessions with audiences at mosques and community centers in several cities.

General Esbati’s speech, Dec. 31 at the Valiasr Mosque in central Tehran, addressed military ranks and members of the mosque, according to a public notice of the event titled “Answering Questions on Syria’s Collapse.”

The session began with General Esbati telling the crowd that he had left Syria on the last military plane for Tehran the night before Damascus fell to the rebels. It ended with him answering questions from the audience. He presented his most sober assessment of Iran’s military capability in the fight against Israel and the United States.

Asked if Iran would take revenge for Israel’s killing of long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, he said Iran already had, citing rocket barrage last fall. Asked if Iran plans to launch a third round of direct attacks on Israel, he said the “situation” realistically cannot handle another attack on Israel right now.

Asked why Iran would not fire missiles at U.S. military bases in the region, he said that would trigger more retaliatory strikes against Iran and its allies by the United States, adding that Iran’s regular missiles — not advanced ones — cannot penetrate advanced U.S. defense systems. .

Despite those assessments, General Ebati said he wanted to reassure everyone not to worry: Iran and its allies, he said, still have the upper hand on the ground in the region.