Syria's Assad Praises Alliance With Iran And Russia
In a bizarre claim, Syria’s dictator president, Bashar Assad, says that the support of Iran and Russia has had an important effect on the stability of Syria.
In a bizarre claim, Syria’s dictator president, Bashar Assad, says that the support of Iran and Russia has had an important effect on the stability of Syria.
Speaking in a rare interview with Sky News, Assad claimed "the close relations between Syria and Russia and Iran prove that Damascus knows how to choose its friends.,” highlighting the brutal force the three governments employed to crush dissent during the civil war.
The war, which broke out in 2011, rages on with the UN estimating that more than 300,000 civilians were killed in the first decade of the conflict.
During its 12 years, the war has forced more than half of the country's 22 million pre-war population to flee their homes with the civil war a major factor in Europe's migrant crisis.
The governments of Canada and the Netherlands recently filed torture complaints against Syria in the International Court of Justice over the "unlawful killing" of thousands of civilians.
Assad added: “The support of our friends had an important impact on the stability of Syria. The support of Iran and Russia helped Syria to resist the crisis that engulfed the country.”
Syria is far from stable continues to be hugely swayed by both Moscow and Tehran, whose own relationship has also been challenged by the desire to gain a greater foothold in Syria, Iran’s presence only putting Russia’s own troops at risk from Israel attacks as the shadow war between Iran and Israel continues with a major focus on Syria.
Just last week, Iran International reported on new research by Israel’s Alma research institute which shows Iran’s investment into weapons plants in Syria continues, at the expense of the Iranian people suffering the worst economic crisis in decades.
The Alma report claimed: “Iran’s major focus is to develop and manufacture precision missiles and rockets, cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on Syrian soil”.
Assad did not refer to the ongoing strengthening of Iran’s proxies on its doorstep, nor the permanent presence of IRGC and Quds forces on Syrian soil during his interview.
This month marks 10 years since then President Obama decided not to bomb Syria after chemical weapons were used against civilians in rebel-held areas. President Assad has now regained control of the capital Damascus and most urban areas.
“We knew from the beginning of the war that this war would be long. It will be and it won't be a temporary crisis - as some thought - but no, no one could have predicted the details,” he told Sky News, seemingly unconcerned that the country has reached the depths of despair, compounded by last year’s tragic earthquake which left over 8,000 civilians dead.
Moving the blame away from his tyrannical regime, Assad pointed the finger at “terrorism” for the country’s destruction. “If we assume that it was the government that started killing and displacing people, then the government is responsible, but terrorism existed and the government was fighting terrorism, it was terrorism that killed, destroyed and burned.,” he claimed.
Soon after anti-regime protests started in early 2011, Assad’s government resorted to use of military force against protesters with Iran’s backing.
The World Bank’s latest report asserts that “although large-scale armed conflict has subsided, Syria continues to rank among the top countries in terms of violent deaths”, noting that “multiple domestic and external shocks are adversely affecting the economy”.
In 2020, it was revealed by a prominent lawmaker that Iran had spent between $20 billion and $30 billion in Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad and fight Islamic State but as revelations of Iran’s growing industrial capabilities continue, the true number is believed to be far higher.
“We have probably paid $20-30 billion to Syria, and we have to take that money back,” Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, said in an interview with Etemad Online at the time. Little has changed since, regime activities in Syria seeming to only step up, not down.
In May, Iran International reported that based on leaked documents from the Iranian foreign ministry, that Syria owes Iran $50 billion. Iranians often express strong disapproval of the regime’s regional policy of establishing and supporting militant groups and its involvement in Syria, while inflation has surpassed 50 percent in Iran. Iran’s national currency has fallen 12-fold in the past five years and nearly half of the population lives below the poverty line.
"Creating hope against the hostile media’s attempts to cause disillusionment is one of the most important missions of those working in the media," stated Ramezan Sharif during a ceremony on Monday, held in honor of National Journalists Day (August 8).
President Ebrahim Raisi visited the state broadcaster (IRIB), a massive organization with over 40,000 employees, to express his appreciation for their work, ahead of Journalists Day. In a brief speech, he asserted that his government listens to criticism.
However, Iranian journalists are currently remembering two colleagues who have been imprisoned for almost a year due to their reporting on the death of Mahsa Amini while in custody in September 2022. They are also paying tribute to over a hundred other journalists who have been arrested since then and handed various punishments, including prison sentences, bans on using mobile phones and social media, travel restrictions, and even lashes.
Several newspapers, including Shargh, Ham-Mihan, and Etemad, dedicated articles on Monday to Niloofar Hamedi, a reporter from the reformist Shargh newspaper, and Elaheh Mohammadi, a reporter for the reformist Ham-Mihan.
These two young women were the first journalists to cover Amini’s story, which sparked widespread protests across the country from mid-September to early January.
Under the headline "Journalists More Abandoned Than Ever," with photos of the imprisoned journalists displayed on its front page, Ham-Mihan, a newspaper not directly controlled by the government, highlighted the intensified lack of freedom of speech and job security that journalists have faced in the past year. The newspaper stated that journalism has now become a "high-risk" profession.
Since last year’s protest movement, the press has had to contend with "professional claimants" who scrutinize newspapers daily to find reasons for legal action. Ham-Mihan added that authorities expect both print and online media to align only with the views of those in power.
A photo taken by Hamedi at the hospital where Mahsa Amini was in a coma in 2022, with her parents embracing her, rapidly spread across social media platforms. Amini had been fighting for her life for three days after sustaining injuries during her arrest by the morality police for wearing her hijab “improperly.”
Mohammadi in turn managed to travel to Amini’s hometown of Saqqez in western Iran to report on her funeral on September 17, which thousands attended.
The two journalists, accused of being CIA agents by the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence organization (SAS), faced charges of propaganda against the regime and conspiracy to commit acts against national security.
Hamedi and Mohammadi were tried behind closed doors in June and are awaiting sentencing. Since their arrest over 310 days ago, they have been denied family visits on many occasions, have never been granted furlough, and have been denied access to an attorney during their trials.
Dozens of other journalists are currently awaiting sentencing. Some have been banned from journalism, including Etemad newspaper’s managing director, Elias Hazrati, who was recently prohibited from any media work for a year.
Elaheh Mohammadi’s twin sister, Elnaz Mohammadi, who has also been a journalist for over a decade, told Etemad newspaper that her sister and Niloufar Hamedi were driven by their commitment to society and their calling as journalists.
“There is pain, and it’s so heavy that it diminishes hopes for the future of journalism in Iran. But I must say, the light is still alive and shining,” she said.
“Journalists’ Day is still a good occasion for us to remind ourselves of what is happening to the media in the country, how much we have to self-censor, and sometimes not do what we thought was one hundred percent right,” Niloufar Hamedi’s husband, Mohammad-Hossein Ajorlou, told Etemad.
Government pressures on journalists are forcing them to leave the country, pursue other jobs if they choose to remain in Iran, or compromise the quality of their work to avoid trouble if they continue as journalists, Ajorlou added."
Iranian government-controlled media have labeled any potential Saudi Israeli deal a regional security threat, seeing the clear implications of a broad pro-West front emerging in the Middle East. Some analysts in Iran have said that Riyadh anticipating a l agreement with Israel, restored diplomatic relations with Tehran in March.
Axios on Wednesday cited four Israeli and US officials as saying that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to get a security agreement with the US focused on deterring Iran in the context of the mega-deal the Biden administration is trying to broker with Riyadh and Jerusalem.
According to the report, Netanyahu brought up the idea for a US-Israeli security agreement during his last phone call with President Biden in July, telling the American president that he wants to send his confidant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer to Washington to present a proposal in detail.
The details of Netanyahu's proposed agreement are not known but Israeli officials say it focuses on US security guarantees around a possible military nuclear threat from Iran. According to these sources, Netanyahu sees the US-Israeli security agreement in the context of the broader deal the US is trying to reach with Saudi Arabia that would also include a Saudi-Israel normalization agreement.
The Biden administration and Saudi officials are also discussing a possible security agreement, but the Washington is reluctant to include a NATO-style Article 5 commitment, which Riyadh wants. Article 5 provides that if a NATO ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the alliance will consider it as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the ally under attack.
According to an unnamed US official, the Biden administration did not accept the Saudi request but did agree to discuss what some US officials are calling an "article 4.5" commitment — a similar security guarantee that would fall short of the Saudi expectations but would still be significant.
Moreover, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the US and Saudi Arabia have agreed on the broad contours of the deal for Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel in exchange for concessions that would help promote the creation of a Palestinian state and civilian nuclear help as well as the security guarantees.
The WSJ claimed that US officials are cautiously optimistic that Washington and Riyadh would hammer out the finer details of what would be “the most momentous Middle East peace deal in a generation” within the next nine to 12 months. However, they warned that they face long odds. “There’s a work plan to explore the elements of what this would be and test the boundaries of what’s possible,” said one senior US official.
The efforts for what the so-called ‘mega deal’ accelerated after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met in Jeddah two weeks ago with Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser.
Biden’s efforts to finalize the deal before the US presidential election campaign starts indicate Washington’s aspirations to remain a central player in the Middle East, perhaps to contain Iran, isolate Russia, and neutralize China’s bid to supplant Washington’s interests in the region.
Later on Wednesday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that negotiators still had a long way to go, something that Haaretz framed as White House throwing cold water on reports of Saudi-Israel normalization.
Emphasizing that the reports gave the impression that the discussions are farther along and closer to some sense of certainty than they actually are, Kirby said, "There are still a lot of conversations that have to occur before we get there. Bottom line: there's no agreed-to set of negotiations, there's no agreed-to framework to codify normalization or any of the other security considerations that we and our friends have in the region. But there is a commitment by the administration to keep talking and to keep trying to move things forward."
In an op-ed for the WSJ on Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen confirmed that the US should give Saudi Arabia a guarantee to defend it against Iranian nuclear aggression as part of a normalization deal with Israel. Comparing Iran's potential nuclear threat to North Korea’s actual nuclear threat to South Korea, Cohen said, “The US defense commitment acts as South Korea’s deterrent against Northern aggression. A comparable American defense pledge could reassure Middle Eastern nations, primarily Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states.”
While US, Israeli, and even Saudi officials – such as Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan – believe that normalizing ties between Jerusalem and Riyadh would bring significant benefits to the region, Iran -- quite counterintuitively – keeps warning regional countries against it as efforts to expand the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia seem likely to bear fruits.