Hossein Sheikholeslam, lawmaker and consultant to the Majlis Speaker, said "The problem with Bashar Assad was that he had no riot police. No sooner a few would gather around than, instead of police action, the Army would open fire on them. There were no talks with the ill-intenders. He would only solve things with force.”
He added "From the very beginning the Supreme Leader maintained that there must be changes in Syria. It was something that happened late. I hope we had started earlier.”
The lawmaker stated "Three years ago, when we found out that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the US, and Qatar wanted to overthrow Assad by taking a ride on the public wave, the Quds Corps commander Mr. Soleimani conveyed a letter from the Supreme Leader to Assad telling him that there must be no killing, that reform is needed. Assad agreed, but he did not have the mechanism to do it. Assad had no police. All there was was the army. If there was a problem they would open fire with machine guns.”
"Assad used to not believe in talks. He would want to cope with things with force. We went there and created the facilities in order to prevent people from getting killed. We went there and formed a political power for talks with the ill-intenders. The fact that Bashar has agreed to talks is in itself important,” he added.