A senior U.S. diplomat assessed that “one of the major risks to the region of this terrible crisis [in Idlib] is the involvement of Iranian forces – not only to prop up the war criminal Assad regime, but also to deploy long-range missile and other weapon systems to threaten our partners and allies such as Turkey, such as Israel, such as Jordan, and to threaten our own U.S. military positions in the Middle East as we saw recently in Iraq. So we have noticed that these forces have become very directly involved in the fighting in Idlib”. He further asserted that “this is another indication that Iran is driving on its own axis in Syria… trying to expand its own hegemonic agenda throughout the northern Levant, and this is something the U.S. is absolutely opposed to”.