Iran security chief says 'new resistance' against Israel to emerge in Syria

Iran's security chief predicts new resistance group in Syria to combat Israel post-Assad, IRNA reports.

Iran's security chief Ali Akbar Ahmadian said a new group would emerge in Syria to fight Israel following the fall of president Bashar al-Assad, state media reported.

"With the occupation of Syrian territories by the Zionist regime, a new resistance has been born that will manifest itself in the years to come," said Ahmadian, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, IRNA news agency reported late Monday.

In a meeting with Oman's foreign minister, Ahmadian insisted that Iran's anti-Israel axis of resistance was "not weakened" after the December 8 fall of Assad, a longtime Tehran ally.

Assad fled Syria after rebel forces led by the Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized the capital Damascus after a lightning offensive.

Since his fall, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military facilities since Assad's fall, saying it aimed to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.

Israeli troops also occupied strategic positions in a UN-patrolled buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights which it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The move was described by UN chief Antonio Guterres as a breach of the 1974 armistice between the two countries.