Iran‘s top general in Syria acknowledged they were “defeated very badly” with the collapse of the Assad regime, which represented a candid assessment divergent from other messages out of Tehran since the fall of the government.

Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati admitted at a mosque in Tehran last week, “I don’t consider losing Syria something to be proud of.”

“We were defeated and defeated very badly, we took a very big blow, and it’s been very difficult,” he added.

His comments, which were initially published Monday by Abdi Media, a Geneva-based news site focused on Iran, represented a candid assessment of the magnitude of the loss of an ally they propped up leading Syria.

Iran came to the aid of former Syrian President Bashar Assad during the country’s civil war, and keeping him in power afforded them a land corridor from Tehran to Beirut so they could support several of its proxies, including militias in Iraq and Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Esbati revealed that Tehran’s relationship with Assad was strained for months prior to his ouster over his refusal to open a military front against Israel as requested by Iran’s proxies in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, according to the New York Times. Tehran presented Assad with a plan of how Syria could use Iran’s military arsenal to attack Israel.

Israel has engaged to various degrees against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen since Hamas’s attack more than fifteen months ago. Overall, the Israeli military has decimated Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s two proxies that share a border with Israel, and they have begun operations in Syria since Assad’s fall, as well as against the Houthis in Yemen.

Hezbollah, facing significant losses from its war with Israel, did not come to Assad’s aid as rebel forces quickly amassed territory before pushing him out.

Estabi also said in his remarks that Tehran would continue to pursue a foothold in Syria despite the formation of a new government that seemingly does not share its ideology toward Israel.

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“We can activate all the networks we have worked with over the years,” he said. “We can activate the social layers that our guys lived among for years; we can be active in social media and we can form resistance cells.”

The Iranian general also accused the Russian forces in Syria of sabotaging their defense systems, effectively facilitating Israeli attacks on Iranian military infrastructure in Syria.