Breitbart Saudi outlets reported on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources within Syria, that the nation’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, had expelled Iranian Quds Force Commander Mustafa Javad Ghaffari from the country after the terror chief attempted to create a black market in Syria and needlessly inflamed tensions with the country’s neighbors.
The Quds Force is the foreign terrorist unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), itself a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and a formal wing of the Iranian military. The Quds Force has been in relative disarray since then-President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike to take out its leader, Qasem Soleimani, in early 2020. Ghaffari is believed to have been Soleimani’s “right-hand man” and played a key role in helping Assad commit mass atrocities against civilians to remain in power during the Syrian Civil War. Under Soleimani, no reports indicated tensions between longtime allies, Iran and Syria.
The Saudi outlets, reportedly, did not note what role, if any, Soleimani’s replacement, Esmail Qaani, played in the alleged tensions between the two countries.
