Syria

Hezbollah showed real face by siding with Assad: Ghalioun BEIRUT: The Syrian opposition leader said Hezbollah’s decision to side with President Bashar Assad in his eight-month crackdown on Syrian protesters has shown the resistance’s group real face. “The Syrian revolutionaries in the streets daily shout slogans against Iran and Hezbollah after the resistance’s mask slipped off when it sided with the Syrian regime and helped it crush its oppressed people,” the head of the Syrian National Council Burhan Ghalioun said in remarks published Monday by Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal. Reconsidering Syria’s strategy with Iran and putting an end to arms supplies to Hezbollah are among the Syrian opposition’s demands, Ghalioun said. Last week the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Ghalioun in which he said “Our relations with Iran will be revisited as [will those of] any of the countries in the region, based on the exchange of economic and diplomatic interests, in the context of improving stability in the region and not that of a special relationship. There will be no special relationship with Iran.” He said breaking the exceptional relationship with Iran after the fall of the Syrian regime would change its relationship with Hezbollah. Commenting on Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s latest speech, Ghalioun stressed in his interview with Al-Mustaqbal that the next Syria government would “not interfere” in Lebanon’s internal affairs. “We send a clear message to all allies and spies of the Syrian regime in Lebanon to think about their future in their country ... after the collapse of the criminal regime in Damascus,” he warned. Ghalioun added that the fall of Assad’s government was certain. “The end of the regime is inevitable within a few months," he said, pointing out that unlike the Libyan revolution, the Syrian uprising is in “no need of military operations.” “All we need are safe zones that Syrian opposition members, who will immediately multiply, can resort to; and then the regime won’t be able to hold out against this popular flood," he said.