Bitter Rivals illuminates the essential history - and profound ripple effect - of Iran and Saudi Arabia's power struggle | dHNfUXhBaXc2enIyY28
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00:00From the start, Iran backed Assad.
00:09Syria has really been Iran's only continuous ally since the 1979 revolution.
00:17And when the uprisings began, the Iranian regime was determined to do all in their power,
00:24both financially and militarily, to prevent the Assad regime from collapsing.
00:35Back in 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, protests began against the Assad regime.
00:44The first six to ten months of the uprising, this was truly a civil uprising.
00:51It was motivated by the rest of the Arab uprising, the need for political participation, asking
01:00for freedom, reining in the security services of the Syrian regime.
01:09It was led by a fairly non-violent civil movement of students, laborers, villagers.
01:20Then I think what happened is a decision was made by the Assad regime that we are not going
01:27to negotiate.
01:50Once the violence began, Iran sent in money, weapons and military advisers from the IRGC
01:56to help Assad crush the protests.
02:04The official line, both here and in Iran, is that the uprising in 2011 was really a
02:09foreign plot.
02:12Was there never a popular revolution prior, in the first month or weeks of the uprising?
02:18In fact, it has never been there.
02:21I'm living here.
02:23I know what happened.
02:25It was a prepared, prefabricated scenario of what will happen.
02:31Since the beginning, we have said that this is a war against Muslim fanatics.
02:39In fact, armed opposition to Assad grew gradually, and was made up of many different groups backed
02:46by many countries.
02:48You had Saudi Arabia, who was an important patron, and Qatar, who was an important patron.
02:54UAE, to a lesser extent, was a patron.
02:56You had Turkey, who was a patron.
02:58You had the United States, who was a patron.
03:00You had the EU, who was a patron.
03:04Everybody is giving money to different people.
03:06Everybody is giving different types of weapons to different groups.
03:14The Saudi Arabian government supported two hardline Sunni Islamist groups.
03:20You paid millions of dollars into groups like Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islami.
03:24And who are Ahrar al-Sham and who is Jaysh al-Islami?
03:27They're Syrians.
03:28They're Syrians being killed by whom?
03:30They're being killed by Iranians.
03:32So we're giving them the means to defend themselves.
03:38We support the Syrian people.
03:43Iranians are killing the Syrian people.
03:45That's the difference between us.
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