Syria’s interim prime minister, who stressed that the recent violence in the country poses a threat to “unity,” claims that “a foreign power allied with the former government” is responsible for the unrest in Syria.

In an interview with Reuters published on Monday, March 10, Ahmed al-Sharaa said that loyalists of former President Bashar al-Assad, members of the 4th Division under the command of Maher al-Assad and “a foreign power allied with the former regime” in Syria, started the fighting.

He did not name this foreign power, but his reference to “groups that lost in the new situation in Syria” could be a reference to Iran as an ally of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.