Syrians used to live dignified life when Iran was there

Major General Hossein Salami made the remarks on Sunday in a conference in Tehran about the Sacred Defense against the Saddam Hussein Baathist regime.

"Today, we see how the foreign powers that are igniting a fire in Syria are like hungry wolves hunting down a lone deer in the desert, tearing off each piece of its body," the IRGC chief said.

"People in Damascus now understand how valuable the men of the resistance are when they are there, and what pain the nation has to suffer if they are not there," he said after referring to reports on the Israeli regime's military getting closer to the Damascus outskirts.

"We did not go there (Syria) to annex part of Syrian territory to our own, we did not go there to make it a field for our ambitious and extravagant interests; we went there to prevent the dignity of Muslims from being destroyed," General Salami added.

"As soon as the Syrian government fell, you saw what terrible things happened in the country," he noted in an apparent reference to the Israeli regime's military strikes and occupation of the Syrian territory.

He continued to warn the Zionist regime not to get very happy with the change in the government in Syria, underscoring that "The Zionists will pay a heavy price. They will be buried in Syrian soil, though this will take some time."

"This is a great lesson alongside the other lessons we learned from the Sacred Defense," he said. 

He recalled the memory of the former commander of the IRGC Quds Force Martyr Qassem Soleimani saying that Martyr Soleimani has to be taken by the Muslim youth as a role model to prevent the subjugation of the Muslims by non-Muslims.

"We will resolutely defend the security and independence of the country, the Islamic Establishment, national interests, and our history and land," the IRGC chief concluded.