Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Moallem in a meeting in Tehran on Wednesday discussed bilateral ties and the latest regional developments, specially Syria. Iran is a key ally of President Bashar Assad’s embattled government.
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Erdogan said the state of chaos and instability in Syria and Iraq has negatively affected neighbouring countries, adding that Ankara has exercised the right to self-defence in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and informed the UN Security Council and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation of its plans.
For his part, Larijani asserted that Iran will continue to support the Syrian government and people, saying that some states are becoming aware of the mistakes they made and the destructive ramifications of their support for terrorism, asserting that these states must correct their course of action and stop supporting terrorism.
“For now we don’t have a joint approach on how specifically we can do it, given the stand-off between various players on the ground, including armed units of the Syrian opposition”, Lavrov said. But it is also because if Mr Al Assad is embraced by Arab governments, Iran understands that a condition for his acceptance will be that he downgrade Syrian relations with Tehran.
Zarif published a notice August 3 in four Arab newspapers: Egypt’s Al Shorouk, Lebanon’s As-Safir, Kuwait’s AlRai and Qatar’s Al Sharq.
Rowhani also called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to advise him to cooperatin with Tehran in the fight against Islamic State.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the three foreign ministers believed “we will eventually be able to make headway on the settlement of the crisis in Syria, while simultaneously working to achieve progress in launching a political process that would be accepted by all Syrian parties and to establish a powerful front to combat the terrorist threat (read Islamic State) in the Middle East”.
Moscow has been trying to bring about rapprochement between the Syrian government and regional states including Saudi Arabia and Turkey to that end.
The region will benefit from the nuclear deal as it “would not cause harm to our neighbors”, he said. “There are a number of points on which we have differences”, Fabius said, alluding to regional conflicts in Syria and Yemen and also on Iran’s refusal to acknowledge Israel.
Speaking separately in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian Federation was not considering sending its air forces to support that campaign.
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Responding to Obama, Iran’s top diplomat said that Iran’s position in nuclear negotiations indicated that even a “fictitious crisis” could be resolved by rationality and respecting each other. He declined to provide details.
