The President of the Syrian National Coalition, Khaled Khoja, said in an interview with al-Hayat that the "problem" with the Obama administration’s stance on the Syrian crisis is that it does not distinguish it from the Iranian nuclear file, as many other Western countries do.
Khoja said: "opposition fighters captured three Houthis in Aleppo, fighting alongside the regime". At the same time, two leaders of the Nusra Front were reported dead in an air raid carried out by the international-Arab coalition near the Turkish border.
The recent visit of UN envoy Staffan de Mistura to Damascus without obtaining the regime’s commitment to stop the bombing of Aleppo for six weeks indicates that "the regime is eluding, just as it did with the former envoys”, Khoja said.
“We told de Mistura we fear the regime is using the plan as a cover to give the Iranian forces located in the south of Aleppo a chance to besiege the city. The commander of al-Quds Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani, is moving freely between Iraq and southern and northern Syria. President Bashar al-Assad has turned into a mere executive director of the Iranian interests. In Aleppo, we captured three Houthis and two Iranians fighting alongside regime's army", Khoja said.
According to Khoja, "France, Germany and Turkey have relations with Iran and they support the Syrian revolution, all of them separate the Iranian nuclear file from what is happening in Syria. The problem is that we do not see this separation in Obama's policy, and perhaps there were doubts among the Syrian people that there is a correlation; as if Iran poses a package of settlements that are not only related to the Iranian nuclear file, but to other issues in the region, namely the Syrian conflict".
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
