Analysts agreed that Iran and Syria cooperated in the organization of
the assault on Israel. They said the transport of the Palestinians and other
Arabs from southern Syria to the Israeli border could not have taken place
without the approval of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
An IRGC defector, Reza Khalili, said Teheran has been alarmed by the
Arab revolt in Syria. Khalili said Iran was searching for any means to
divert the unrest in Syria toward Israel.
"They [border rampages] were part of a larger plan to increase the
pressure on Israel, protect Syrian President Assad, and to assert Iran's
dominance as the leader of the revolutionary forces in the region," Kahlili
said.
"The Iranians had sent IRGC intelligence officers to Syria and Lebanon
to invite these people to Teheran," Hussein Zohari, spokesman for the
opposition Organization of Iranian People's Fedaii Guerrillas, said. "This
shows that Iran was deeply involved in planning and coordinating of these
attacks."
In an interview to the U.S. news agency Newsmax, Zohari said the
opposition had monitored the arrival of Hamas and Hizbullah leaders in early
2011. He said information on the meeting in Teheran came from dissidents in
IRGC.
"We initially thought they had come for some kind of military training,
but then our people told us it was the political leadership that had come,"
Zohari said.
At least 12 people were killed in the Arab storming of Israel's borders.
Most of the casualties stemmed from Syria, in which about 1,000 Arabs rushed
the Israeli border fence and 100 entered the Israeli-controlled Golan
Heights.