Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed suggestions that Russia’s actions were violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which prohibits selling or transferring combat aircraft to Iran.
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According to the U.S., Russian Federation violates the Resolution of UNSG 2231, which stipulates prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran unless the council approves.
The second consecutive day of bombing missions from Iran’s Hamadan airbase about 175 miles southwest of Tehran involved Sukhoi Su-34 strike aircraft, called Fullbacks by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, according to the Russian news outlet RT. It is unsurprising, then, to see the USA complain about the matter, though the resolution’s mention appears to be grasping at straws, as it clearly requires a broad interpretation of the text’s language, and it is unlikely anyone else on the Security Council is going to see things America’s way.
US Col. Chris Garver, the coalition spokesman, told reporters via teleconference from Baghdad that the Russians notified the coalition about their planned movement through Iraqi airspace as per a memorandum of understanding for flight safety made between Russia and the United States months ago.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Russian defence ministry announced in a statement that it had used an airbase near the city of Hamadan in western Iran to carry out airstrikes in Syria. While Moscow and Tehran have combined to be the two biggest backers of the embattled Mr. Assad, there were no plans for a permanent base, the Iranian lawmaker said.
The diplomacy comes amid fierce fighting in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and new Russian bombing operations in Syria originating from an Iranian air base.
One obvious reason is that Tehran, like Moscow, is dismayed at the strength of the Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo resisting the efforts of the Russian- and Iranian-backed Assad regime to crush them.
“The Russian air force uses these fighter jets with Iran’s approval in order to take part in the counter-terrorism operation”.
Mr. Obama’s public shaming of Mr. Assad five years ago, and his declaration in 2012 of a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria, raised expectations that the US would take strong actions to topple the Syrian regime, said Jim Phillips, a specialist on the Middle East at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
He finished off with a personal jab at State Department spokesman Mark Toner: “We are sure that, once Mr. Mark Toner passed [this] exam, he would not think of the destruction of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists by Russian warplanes was ‘unfortunate'”.
The cooperation, he said, “is a direct effect of United States and Saudi regime change operations, destabilizing the region first in Iraq, then in Libya, now in Syria with the US-backed Saudi invasion of Yemen as well”.
The raids struck two major Isis command centres and training camps “eliminating more than 150 militants” Russian state news agency TASS said.
When an Anadolu Agency reporter asked Toner during the briefing what the USA position was over the kidnapped head of the Syrian Kurdish National Council (KNC), Ibrahim Biro, the spokesman said he was aware of the reports but had no details on it. Biro was kidnapped last week by the terrorist PKK’s Syrian affiliate Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) forces and was forced to leave Syria.
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Both oppose calls for Assad to step down as a way of resolving the conflict that has killed more than 290,000 people since it erupted in March 2011.
