Israel National News reports: “Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to social media on Thursday to share his feelings about the fall of the Assad regime, which is seen as a major Iranian loss, and the Israeli military operations in the Syrian buffer zone.

Addressing the Israeli operations he wrote in Hebrew: ‘The young people of Syria will liberate the territories occupied by the Zionist entity.’…

The Ayatollah also addressed accusations that the Assad regime fell due to a failure by Iran to protect it: ‘It’s neither logical nor acceptable to the public opinion for an Iranian army to go and fight in place of the Syrian army. No, it’s the duty of the army of that country itself to fight. What our forces could do and did was to provide advisory support.’

He added: ‘The army of a nation must do the main fighting. The Basiji, voluntary forces from elsewhere can only fight alongside the army of that country. If the local army shows weakness, the Basij cannot do anything. Unfortunately, this is what happened in Syria.’…”