Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad addresses the new members of parliament in Damascus, Syria in this handout released by SANA on August 12, 2020. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

A major rift has opened between Syrian President Bashar Assad and the head of Iran’s terrorist army in Syria, Arabic-language media reported Wednesday.

According to the Saudi news outlet Al Hadath, a source described as familiar with the issue said that Assad and other high-ranking members of the Syrian regime have “excluded” Mustafa Jawad Ghafari, head of Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force in Syria.

The Quds Force has helped prop up Assad’s regime since a revolt against the dictator in 2011 led to an ongoing civil war.

Al Hadath stated that, according to the source, Assad considers Ghafari’s various activities to be a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

These activities include bypassing Syrian customs, smuggling goods in order to build an Iran-dominated “black market,” exploiting Syrian national resources, looting national assets, and evading taxes.

Assad is also angered that the Quds Force has violated its commitments not to deploy forces in certain parts of Syria, which has in turn prompted Israeli air strikes on Syrian territory.

Syria’s state media said on Monday that its air defenses had intercepted an Israeli missile strike in its central and coastal regions, the latest in a number of recent reports of Israeli strikes.

Perhaps most damning in Assad’s eyes is that Ghafari has presided over Quds Force actions against the US and Israel. The dictator believes that an attack on American targets on Oct. 20 by militias controlled by Iran almost dragged Syria into a war.

The unnamed source told Al Hadath that they consider the rift between Assad and Ghafari a serious blow to Iran’s overall strategy of dominating Syria and thus creating a larger regional empire stretching from Iran to the Lebanese coast.