Iran-Syria relations - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

Syria FM tells Iran it will respond to Israeli attacks

Seth J. Frantzman — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 11:44:50 +0000

Iran denies it is enriching uranium to 90 percent in meeting with Syrians.

Syria’s Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was in Iran this week and told his counterparts that Syria will respond to Israeli attacks on Syria. “We are responding to these attacks every day,” Mekdad said, according to reports in Iranian media. He noted that the “Israeli regime’s attacks on Syria could not go unanswered,” Tasnim news said. “Those who attack Syria are the enemy of Syria and they supported the terrorists. Israel is doing this today. Maybe today’s answer is different from tomorrow and today’s answer is different from yesterday.”

He said that Syria is responding in “various ways.” He claimed Syria is pursuing “terrorists,” which apparently refers to Syria’s regime cracking down on former Syrian rebels in southern Syria near the Golan. “Some expect the response to the airstrikes, but Israel should not forget that Syria may waive such attacks, but it will not forget the essence of the issue…Israel should not be misunderstood and should know that these attacks will be answered,” he said.

These threats took place as he met Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the Iranian Foreign Minister. They focused on strategic relations between the two countries. “Iran condemns the presence of foreign forces in Syria, which was done without coordination with the Syrian government. We welcome the review of the foreign policy of some Arab and European countries and the recent visits to Damascus and the reopening of some embassies,” the Iranian said. Amir Abdullahian also said: “We had a detailed discussion about Afghanistan and we agree on the need to form an inclusive government in Afghanistan.”

Abdullahian slammed Israel and claimed that the “Zionist regime” has carried out attacks on Syria. “The fake and terrorist regime of Israel is the root of insecurity in the region and in West Asia.” He then referenced the recent peace deals between Israel and the Gulf. He also said he hoped the Iranian president would soon meet Syria’s president. Mekdad invited the Iranian president. “Economic relations between Iran and Syria were the focus of the talks, and we talked about them during the meeting with the [Iranian] President and Amir Abdullahian,” Mekdad said, adding that talks between Afghanistan and Iraq had also taken place.

This last reference is interesting. The Iranian also mentioned recent clashes on the border with Afghanistan. Iran’s IRGC has recruited Afghan Shi’ites to fight in Syria. It may be that Syria and Iraq are now paying more attention to Afghanistan. This is part of an eastern shift in which all these countries are looking to China and the east.

“I think our region will see new developments in the future,” The Iranian foreign minister said. “According to messages and statements from US officials, they have no choice but to leave the region.” The report of meeting hints that the US may withdraw from another place in the “coming weeks or months.” It is not clear if Iran and Syria think the US might leave the Tanf garrison or some other location or if this is a hint that Iran may plot new attacks against the US in Iraq or Syria.

Iran called for countries to help reconstruct Syria. The Syrian foreign minister “stated that it may be thought that Syria has overcome the past and economic problems, but this is not the case: Syria attaches special importance to relations with Iran and paves the way for Iran’s participation in economic projects. We welcome any Iranian participation in Syria.”

Iran also told Syria it was negotiating in Vienna with western governments to get sanctions lifted. The point of this is that sanctions relief could help Syria. The Iranian foreign minister added: “The three European countries did not take any initiative in these negotiations, as if they were looking to evaluate our team.” He said that “until the last moment, 3 European countries could not present an operational plan and idea.” Iran then slammed western media.

“During the negotiations, some media and lobbies tried to insinuate that Iran has started 90% enrichment.” Iran says this is “pure fabrication and lying.”

Iran has said it rejects an interim agreement in Vienna. They added that “negotiations will resume soon…we are looking for a good agreement and we expect the other side to take such an approach.” The Syrian Foreign Minister also called the UAE Foreign Minister’s visit to Damascus a courageous step, adding: “We will take the next steps based on this step…we hope that other Arab countries will.”

These are important points. It shows that Syria and Iran believe that a new dawn may be emerging amid reconciliation with the Gulf states. It also means Iran is optimistic about talks in Europe, even though it may also be preparing to lay the groundwork for a chance at failure.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/syria-fm-tells-iran-it-will-respond-to-israeli-attacks-688027

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Iran vows ‘crushing response’ to Israel as air strikes kill militiamen

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 10:01:16 +0000

14 pro-Iranian militia fighters killed by alleged Israeli strikes in Syria, with two bases destroyed.

Pro-Iran militias had been supporting Syrian government forces at the Albu Kamal border area near Iraq (AFP).

Iran has vowed to respond to Israeli “hit and run” airstrikes after 14 pro-Iran militia fighters were killed in Syria.

Fighters from Iran and Afghanistan were hit by more than 10 strikes on Saturday night in Deir Ezzor province, on the border with Iraq, according to war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The attack killed eight Iraqis and six Afghan fighters and destroyed two bases as well as several military vehicles, it said.

In a press conference on Sunday, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khateebzadeh did not confirm the deaths but said Iran would respond to Israeli strikes.

“The Zionist regime [Israel] is well aware that the era of hit and run is over and therefore they are very cautious,” he said. “Iran’s presence in Syria is advisory, and naturally, if anyone disrupts this advisory presence, our response will be a crushing one.”

Iran-backed fighters are heavily deployed in a stretch of territory between the Syrian towns of Albu Kamal and Mayadeen, both former strongholds of the Islamic State group.

Along with Russia, Iran has been a key backer of the Damascus regime in its nine-year-long civil war.

Israel has carried out hundreds of air and missile strikes on Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011, targeting Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces as well as government troops.

The Israeli army rarely acknowledges individual strikes but on 18 November confirmed that it had overnight targeted several sites around Damascus airport, including an alleged “secret military site” used by Iranians in Syria.

Source: Iran vows ‘crushing response’ to Israel as airstrikes kill militiamen | Middle East Eye

Source: https://www.syriahr.com/en/193489/

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Turkey’s Erdogan threatens to send ‘millions’ of refugees to Europe if EU calls Syria offensive ‘invasion’

Roland Oliphant — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 21:31:39 +0000

Turkish Army vehicles drive towards the Syrian border on Thursday CREDIT: BULENT KILIC/AFP

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to send “millions” of Syrian refugees to Europe in response to criticism of his military offensive into Kurdish-controlled northern Syria.

Speaking to his party, Mr. Erdogan said Turkish forces had killed 109 “militants” since the operation began on Wednesday, and warned he would “open the doors” to spark a new refugee crisis in Europe if the EU called it an “invasion.”

“Hey EU, wake up. I say it again: if you try to frame our operation there as an invasion, our task is simple: we will open the doors and send 3.6 million migrants to you,” he said.

He added that Islamic State prisoners held by Kurdish forces would be kept in jail or returned to home countries willing to take them.

The comments came as a Syrian human rights group said up to 100,000 civilians have been displaced by fighting since Turkey launched its offensive with shelling and airstrikes against Kurdish strong points and cities on Wednesday afternoon.

Large convoys of civilian cars were still heading south towards the cities of Hasakah and Tel Temir in a bid to flee the fighting on Thursday morning.

The Syrian Red Crescent said five civilians had been killed and 25, including six children, injured by 9 pm on Wednesday.

Turkey, which says it wants to create a “safe zone” on the Syrian side of the border, said it had seized all its designated objective for the first day and that the operation continued to go as planned.

“Our heroic commandos taking part in Operation Peace Spring are continuing to advance east of the Euphrates (river),” the Defence Ministry wrote on Twitter. “The designated targets were seized,” it said in a later statement.

Shelling near Akcakale, Sanliurfa inside Syria, taken from the Turkish side of the border on Thursday morning. CREDIT: LEFTERIS PITARAKIS/ AP

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they had repulsed a Turkish attack on the city of Tel Abyad and said claims Turkey had made any advance east the Euphrates were false.

A spokesman for the National Army, a Turkish-backed Syrian rebel group, said its fighters were moving towards both cities in support of the Turkish army but denied SDF reports of heavy clashes near Tel Abyad.

Witnesses said there was shelling around Ras al Ain, also known as Sani Kani, the border town that appears to be a key Turkish objective for the campaign.

The SDF also said they have come under attack by Islamic State sleeper cells taking advantage of the Turkish offensive.

Five ISIL fighters were killed in a failed attack on security forces in the village of Tweimiyeh, near the Turkish border, on Thursday morning, the group said.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would “open the door” to Europe for millions of Syrian refugees if the EU called the Turkish operation an “invasion” CREDIT: REX

“Daesh sleep cells this Thursday morning tried to take over al Twimiyah villages to hit security and cause chaos by targeting one of our military points,” the SDF said in a statement.

“A number of them were killed and the rest were captured.”

The reported attack came as Kurdish authorities accused Turkey of a “clear attempt” to help Isil prisoners escape by shelling a prison holding militants of more than 60 nationalities.

Shelling on Wednesday night targeted part of the Chirkin prison in the city of Qamishli, Kurdish-led authorities said in a statement. No Isil prisoners are known to have escaped.

On Wednesday evening Donald Trump said US forces had taken custody of several foreign Isis prisoners, including notorious British fighters known as the “Beatles”.

London-born Alexanda Kotey, 35, and El Shafee Elsheikh, a 31-year-old Briton born in Sudan, had been in the custody of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces since February 2018. They will now face trial in the United States.

Syrian government allies Russia and Iran both called for an end to the offensive.

Britain joined other European Union countries in calling on Turkey to cease the operation on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio called the offensive “unacceptable.”

Meanwhile, Iran, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, called Thursday for “an immediate halt” to the offensive and demanded Turkish forces withdraw.

Russia, another Syrian ally, blamed the chaos on American policymaking and called for dialogue between Turkey and the Assad government. Bashar Assad does not control the Kurdish-led autonomous region in northern Syria.

China said Syria’s territorial integrity must be “respected” and called on Turkey to “exercise restraint.”

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-send-millions-refugees-europe-eu-calls/

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Iran, Russia Prepare to Battle Each Other Over Control of Post-war Syria

Amos Harel and Amir Tibon — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 03:03:05 +0000

U.S. sanctions are pushing Iran to try and carve out even more profits from Syria’s post-war reconstruction.

\ YORUK ISIK/ REUTERS

>> Casualties reported in alleged Israeli strike on Damascus overnight; Syria denies

The events of the past days in Syria have one thing in common: as the war in Syria is entering its final stages, a new battle is emerging. Both Russia and Iran, who supported the Assad regime throughout the civil war, are expecting to reap the benefits of Assad’s victory. While the two countries have long been allies in the Syrian arena, their interests sometimes diverge, especially as both are eyeing the financial rewards of Syria’s upcoming reconstruction process.

The tensions in Syria escalated on Tuesday when Russia moved naval forces towards the Syrian coast and NATO criticized Moscow for its aggressive moves. Russian media called the deployment Moscow’s largest naval buildup since it entered the Syrian conflict in 2015. The reinforcement comes as Russia’s ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, is believed to be considering an assault on the last big rebel-held enclave, Idlib in the north.

The Russian naval force was sent to the region at the same time that the Syrian regime announced the signing of a new security agreement with Iran, following a visit by Iran’s Defense Minister to Damascus earlier this week. As part of the agreement, Iran will help rebuild Syria’s military and defense industries.

Israel believes the Iranians are sending a message: we are here to stay. The rehabilitation of the Syrian army, which is in very poor condition after the war, is not high on the list of threats that concern Israel.

YORUK ISIK/Reuters

Russia and Iran have both supported Assad over the past seven years. During this time, they did not directly clash with each other in Syria, but Israeli officials believe the two countries are at odds on some issues related to Syria’s future. The contracts for Syria’s reconstruction, for which both countries are vying, will likely include some of Syria’s oil reserves – at least those that have survived the war. A behind-the-scenes battle over who will control the Assad regime in the “new Syria” is now already under way.

>> Analysis: Everyone wants to get Iran out of Syria. But no one knows how to do it

One country that is likely going to stay out of the infighting over the reconstruction process is the United States. The Trump administration has no clear policy on the “day after” in Syria, except for one principle: No American money will be spent on it.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, made that point clear at a speech she gave on Tuesday in Washington, explaining that Russia and the Assad regime “own” Syria now. “You broke it, you own it,” Haley said at a summit organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Haley added that perhaps Russia and Assad expect the United States to lead the reconstruction process of Syria, but “we are going to stay out of it.” Russia and the Assad regime, she said, “now own a great pile of rubble” in Syria.

\ YORUK ISIK/ REUTERS

The concern is that without any American involvement, the “great pile of rubble” could turn into a future source of income for Iran, exactly at the same time that its economy is being put under pressure because of U.S. sanctions. In Damascus, the Iranian Defense Minister spoke about Iran’s commitment to Syria’s reconstruction, hinting at such a calculation.

One of Tehran’s goals is to take over Syria’s telecom industry, which was damaged during the war, but not completely destroyed. Matthew Brodsky, a Middle East analyst in Washington, recently published a review of the Assad regime’s financial situation, in which he mentioned telecom agreements between Iran and Syria that have already been signed, explaining that “the telecommunications sector is clearly important to Iran not only for the financial return but for eavesdropping on the population. Hezbollah’s telecommunications contracts in Lebanon have paid enormous dividends in this regard.”

Brodsky, who is a senior fellow at the Security Studies Group think-tank, also mentioned a deal between Iran and Syria that will allow Iran to develop phosphate mines in Syria, although it is not clear if Iran will have exclusive rights to those mines or have to share them with Russia. In addition, he wrote about leases between Iran and the Syrian regime involving some 12,000 acres of land in Homs and Tartous provinces, which could be used for building oil and gas terminals.

Another financial benefit for Iran that could emerge from the reconstruction process is the transfer of agricultural lands in Syria, which were left behind by Syrian citizens turned refugees over the last seven years, into Iranian hands. Brodsky wrote about the Assad regime’s “repopulation schemes” that would turn some of those lands over to members of the pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias, as a means of helping them entrench their presence in Syria. Some in Israel believe these lands will also, at some point, host new construction projects, which will be built by Iranian companies.

Two weeks ago, Ariane Tabatabai, an expert on Iran and a political scientist at the Rand Corporation, told Haaretz that Israel’s goal of getting Iran out of Syria is unrealistic, in light of the Islamic Republic’s expectation to make profits from the reconstruction process. “It’s hard to see them going anywhere,” she said. “The Russians don’t have the will to take Iran completely out of Syria. The Iranians have a significant presence in Syria, and Russia has no incentive to try and force them out, something they may not even be able to achieve.” The American sanctions only increase Iran’s interest in carving out whatever profits it can from Syria’s reconstruction, she added.

In order to see the benefits it hopes to get, however, Iran will also need other countries – mostly China, Europe and the Gulf countries – to invest in Syria’s reconstruction. Over the last few days, there have been calls from human rights groups and former European officials not to invest in Syria’s reconstruction as long as Assad continues to commit massive human rights violations.

We should not listen to Russian pleas for money to rebuild what they bombed in Syria. All signs point at Assad blocking returns and wanting to profit from reconstruction. My take for @ProSyn https://t.co/ZNystx4QX1

— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) August 24, 2018

Carl Bildt, a former Swedish Foreign Minister, tweeted this week that “we should not listen to Russian pleas for money to rebuild what they bombed in Syria. All signs point at Assad blocking returns [of Syrian refugees] and wanting to profit from reconstruction.”

Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, expressed a similar view, writing in the British newspaper The Independent: “Long before any talk of providing reconstruction assistance for Syria, which in any event would require lifting separate targeted sanctions, European governments should call out Russia’s complicity in Syria’s war crimes and vigorously press the Kremlin to end these atrocities and stop underwriting Syria’s repression.”

It was the deployment of the Russian air force three years ago that tilted the scales of the war in favor of Assad, who at that time controlled only a quarter of the country’s territory. Even today, Russia maintains its military presence in Syria to ensure the regime’s upper hand. But it has other strategic interests, primarily maintaining access to the Mediterranean through the port under its control in Tartous in northern Syria.

Last month, the Assad regime completed its takeover of the Syrian Golan Heights, and after Russia agreed with Iran that Iranian forces would be kept at a distance of 85 kilometers from Israel’s border with one notable exception: Iranians are still present in and around Damascus.

In Israel, meanwhile, tension has been noted even within the close alliance of Iran and the Assad regime. In recent weeks, there were two incidents in the eastern part of Syria, close to the border with Iraq, in which the Syrian military attacked Shi’ite militias associated with Iran. These attacks appear to be part of a local, internal fight over dominance in that specific region, which is critical for Iran’s plans of creating a “land bridge” to the Mediterranean through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The same area was the site of an air strike two months ago, which some media outlets reported was conducted by Israel.

The bottom line is that the war in Syria has already been won by Assad. But now the fight over the “day after” is beginning, and it will include power struggles between all the different parties active in the Syrian arena.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-after-idlib-iran-russia-prepare-to-battle-each-other-over-control-of-post-war-syria-1.6429740

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