May 6, 2014

A former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was censored after he made comments about the formation of an Iranian committee to plan for Iranian provinces to rebuild Syrian provinces and the establishment of a second Hezbollah inside Syria. An article published about the comments was taken down.

General Hussein Hamedani’s comments were made at the administrative council of Hamedan province. The full Fars News article is still available via Google's cache.

Hamedani had announced the formation of a committee to help rebuild Syria, saying, “With consideration of the heavy damages the country of Syria and its people have suffered at the hands of terrorists, this committee has been formed so that the Syrian people know that the Iranian people will always be with you.”

He added that the amount of backing that each Iranian province would give to Syria had recently been determined in meetings in Tehran. Under the plan, each Iranian province would be assigned to a Syrian province.

Hamedani asked the Iranian people to view the civil war in Syria as they do the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. When Iraq's then-leader Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, many Iranians rallied to defend the country. Hundreds of thousands were killed in what was commonly referred to as the “Sacred Defense” or the “Imposed War.” He said that Iran should fight in the Syrian war because the conflict is “at the level of the Sacred Defense.”