They justified this by claiming that the Iranian negotiators suggested granting safe exit to trapped people in Zabadani in exchange of easing the attack of the Northern pro-regime villages. Ahrar al-Sham saw in this suggestion an Iranian move to change the Syrian demographics by emptying Zabadani from its original people who have lived there for thousands of years in order to house immigrant fighters from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah who have moved with their families to Syria in an attempt to settle there after four years of war.