Syrian opposition fighters have criticised the Iranian nuclear agreement as enabling the ongoing disintegration of their country and empowering Tehran despite its support for President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Opposition fighters said the agreement, which will provide billions of dollars of sanctions relief to the Iranian government, strengthens a widely held belief that the US does not wish to see Assad’s departure. But they said the deal’s impact would not immediately be felt on the ground in Syria given Iran’s already plentiful support for Assad, and vowed to press on with their campaign. “It is the belief of many on the ground that America and Iran are strategic allies, and all the overt signs of animosity are simply hypocrisy,” said Ahmad al-Alwan, a religious official with the Army of Conquest, an alliance of rebel groups in the north of Syria that scored a series of victories against the regime’s army this year.

“Iranian assistance has never been severed from Assad and Iran has been aiding Assad above and below the table before the entire world with the tools to kill the Syrian people,” he added. “The nuclear agreement will not change this equation.”

Signed by western powers along with Russia and China, the historic deal with Iran will limit the country’s nuclear programme and subject it to inspections in exchange for the removal of numerous international sanctions that have battered the Islamic Republic’s economy.

But critics of the deal say Iran is likely to use a portion of its windfall to expand its influence across the Middle East, appearing to have gained from its expansionism in Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad.

“We have a real fear that Iran will use the unfrozen accounts for more shameless intervention in the region and enflaming strife and war, as well as providing more support to the Assad regime to prevent its fall and allow it to continue carrying out terrorist massacres against the Syrian people,” said Mohammed Maktabi, the secretary general of the Syrian National Council, the exiled opposition.



Despite the withering sanctions, Iran has continued to provide billions of dollars-worth of support and weaponry to its allies in recent years. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has emerged as the prime guerrilla movement in the world with an arsenal more powerful than that of many states after a destructive war with Israel in 2006, paying tribute to Iran’s support. The Assad regime has endured a brutal four-year civil war with Iranian support in the form of personnel, arms, cash and fuel.

Meanwhile, the US has declined to intervene in the war except to bomb the terror group Islamic State and the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. The US-led campaign against Isis has not prevented Assad’s air force from carrying out thousands of air raids against rebel-held territory, including the use of barrel bombs, a highly inaccurate weapon, to kill thousands of civilians.

The contrast between Iran’s support for Assad and American reluctance to become enmeshed has convinced many rebels that the US sees the survival of Assad, or at least his regime, as a strategic goal that serves its interests as well as the security of Israel, its ally. “We know that if America wanted to remove Assad it would have, but America wants to lengthen the conflict in Syria, to manage it, not to end it,” said Alwan. “Iran is America’s best partner in the region,” said a source close to Jabhat al-Nusra. “The war in Syria will continue, and the solution for them is a political transition while preserving the regime.” The perception of American complicity in Assad’s survival could empower radical groups in Syria, such as Isis, who have long argued that both the west and Iran are conspiring against its people. “A freed-up Iran is [the opposition’s] worst nightmare scenario, whatever actually ends up being the consequence of that,” said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Doha Brookings Center. “Unfortunately, the effect this deal will have on perceptions – and perceptions are so incredibly important here – can only benefit the more isolationist views of those on the more extreme end of the opposition spectrum.”

The deal’s timing is also highly sensitive, coming at a moment when Assad’s army appears fragile, having lost swaths of territory to the opposition in recent months, as well as to Isis in the provinces of Homs and Hassakah, and fighting off fresh offensives in Aleppo and the south.

“Everyone is feeling resentment: why at this decisive time?” said Ibrahim Noureddine, a spokesman for the First Legion, an opposition faction in the south. Many of the opposition groups in the area, save for Jabhat al-Nusra, are seen as moderate and close to western and Gulf states opposed to Assad. “The street and the opposition factions in the south resent this because it is completely against them,” he said. “Iran’s role in resolving the Syria crisis is to leave Syria.”