Iran under Khamenei didn't just fund and arm Assad's regime, it was a key part of Syrian machine that murdered 500,000 Sunni Muslims

Iran, under Khamenei, is largely responsible for the actual genocide of half a million Sunni Muslims in Syria, as well as the displacement of several million others.  

Destroying the Sunnis in Syria was part of Iran’s master plan — hatched by General Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated in January 2020 — for creating a Shiite arc that stretches from Iran through Lebanon. 

Iran actually sent many of its top officers to command troops in Syria while the mass murder of Syrian civilians was going full force. 

Ten Iranian brigadier generals died in combat in Syria during eight years of fighting. 

Motorists drive their vehicles past a billboard depicting Iran's then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as displayed in the center of Tehran's Valiasr Square on July 13, 2025. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)  (Times of Israel) 

Ignoring Iran’s role in the Syrian genocide is convenient for those who wish to brand the United States’ and Israel’s attack on the regime as immoral and illegal.  The Ayatollah “sent militia forces into Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad against Western backed rebels and Sunni jihadists.” 

Help for Assad against jihadis sounds reasonable. But the majority of Sunni Muslim deaths in Syria were civilians or political prisoners. 

According to a 2018 report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 104,000 political prisoners were executed in cold blood by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In 2017, Amnesty International published a report which stated that between 2011 and 2015 the Syrian government had murdered an estimated 13,000 people, mostly civilians.  

The conflict in Syria was not simply a civil war between opposing armed forces. 

What began as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime had devolved into a violent struggle between local, national, regional, and international forces. The Syrian government, extremist groups, and outside actors have perpetrated mass atrocities against civilians as a systematic strategy of war.  

Khamenei had absolute power and the final say in Iran’s future, whether in regard to its controversial nuclear programme or detente with the west. 

He was not only commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces, which includes the regular artesh (army) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), but also headed the “axis of resistance” – an anti-western and anti-Israel alliance.

This was made up of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, Shia militias in Iraq, the Houthi rebels eventually occupying western Yemen, and the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

Thus his rule had a direct impact on much of the region, and under his leadership the Islamic Republic of Iran became one of the world’s biggest state sponsors of terrorism. 

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Additional Info :  

With Hassan Rouhani as president (2013-21), Iran temporarily came out of isolation. 

After years of negotiations with world powers, in 2015 it signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. The deal would not have been possible without Khamenei’s signalling of “heroic flexibility”.

* Khamenei amassed control of bonyads (charitable foundations) worth tens of billions of US dollars.

** Under his rule Iran was marred by systemic corruption, mismanagement and rising repression. At home there was deeply felt anger and resentment towards him and the clerical establishment.

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