Tehran  -  Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that the weakening of the anti-Israel “resistance” after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Syria would not diminish Tehran’s power.

Some, “unaware of the meaning of resistance, imagine that when the resistance becomes weak, Islamic Iran will also become weak... Iran is strong and powerful and will become even more powerful,” Khamenei said in his first speech after Assad’s fall. Syrian rebels’ lightning push to Damascus from their strongholds in the northwest ended the decades-long rule of Assad’s family, once an ally of Tehran.

The Iranian supreme leader, who has the final say in his country’s affairs, accused the United States and “the Zionist regime”, Israel, of plotting against Assad.

“No one should doubt that what has taken place in Syria is the product of a joint US-Israeli plot,” he said.

He also blamed another “neighbouring state of Syria” for its “obvious role” in the recent developments, without naming the country.

According to Khamenei, different “invaders” in Syria were pursuing different aims.

“Their goals are different, some of them are seeking to seize the lands of northern or southern Syria, America is seeking to strengthen its position in the region,” he said.

Syria could have been helped, he added, if “the motivations remained the same inside that country” as they had earlier in the war.