Larijani said. “Iran has not allocated a military base to Russia or any foreign countries.”Citing the Russian Defense Ministry, certain media outlets said Tuesday that TU-22M3 and SU-34 jets took flight from the Hamedan Airbase to strike targets in Syria.Before Hamedan Airbase, Russian forces had been using Khmeimim Airbase in Syria or in Russian territories”.
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It is thought to be the first time Russian Federation has struck targets inside Syria from Iran since it launched a bombing campaign to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September a year ago.
According to Radio Free Europe, Toner said these flights from Iran “would not definitively prevent Washington from cooperating with Moscow on resolving the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo or fighting against the Islamic State extremist group in Syria”. Last month, al-Nusra Front changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and said it had severed a relationship with al-Qaeda.
US Secretary of States John Kerry, right, gestures beside Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a news conference in Munich, southern Germany, on February 12, 2016.
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.
Toner said the United States was still open to coordinating with Russian Federation in the fight against ISIS, but “we have certain issues that we want resolved” before entering into such a deal.
Toner said that beyond the question of Russia’s use of a base in Iran, its air strikes often “indiscriminately” hit civilian targets and moderate Syrian opposition groups.
He added: “These military aircraft are being used by Russian air forces with Iran’s agreement as a part of the anti-terrorist operation on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic and on the request of the legal Syrian leadership which the Islamic republic of Iran also cooperates with upon request”.
Russian Federation sent Sukhoi Su-34 jets from the Hamedan base in western Iran on Wednesday morning to carry out a second group wave of aerial strikes against IS targets in Deir Ezzor province, the defense ministry said, calling the operation a success.
But when asked about such a collaboration by CNN’s Clarissa Ward Wednesday, the former American ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, said, “It’s not at all clear you can trust the Russians”.
Sukhoi-30SM and Sukhoi-35S based at Hmeymim, in Syria, provided protection. “This airfield in Iran is only 900km away”, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said.
He specified that the jets were using the Nojeh airbase in Iran’s western Hamadan province to refuel. Iranian proxies such as Lebanon’s Hizbollah and an array of Shi’ite Iraqi militias have also fought for the Syrian regime. To establish an operational base, they’d have to move hundreds of servicemen as well.
Warplanes took off from a base in Iran to target militants in Syria. Iran’s constitution, ratified after its 1979 Islamic Revolution, bars foreign militaries from having bases within the country.
The United States and Russian Federation will try again to stop Syria’s civil war and forge a new counterterrorism partnership when their top diplomats meet next week in Geneva, U.S. officials said Thursday.
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Underscoring the U.S. confusion, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that Washington was “still trying to assess what exactly they’re doing”.
