Iran’s mission in Syria is far from over – officials

Tabnak – While the United States and the Israeli regime have recently increased their pressures on Iran to force it out of Syria, Iran once again clarifies that its Syrian mission is still far from over. Tehran at the same time warns about Tel Aviv’s plots against the Arab country.

In this vein, a senior Iranian official says Iranian military advisers will continue their presence in Syria to help the Arab country defeat an all-out foreign-sponsored militancy.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the Iranian parliament speaker's special adviser on international affairs, stressed that Syrians would not permit the Zionists in their homeland following the collapse of the Daesh terrorist group.

"The Zionist regime tries to gain dominance over Syria after Daesh, but resistance forces and military advisers from the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue their presence alongside Syria to counter terrorism,” he said in a meeting with Palestinian Ambassador to Tehran Salah al-Zawawi.

"The Syrian people will not allow the country to be turned into the hotbed of Zionist terrorists once again," Amir-Abdollahian noted.

Amir-Abdollahian also said Tehran will keep up its "decisive support" for the resistance and will not give in to pressures as regards the Palestinian issue and Israeli threats against the security of the regional countries.

Meanwhile, another Iranian official highlighted the reasons for deployment of Iranian military advisers to Syria and Iraq, saying their presence in the two Arab countries at the request of their governments is in line with efforts to defend Iran’s security and interests against enemies.

“If we were not present in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon today, the disfigured Daesh militants, who cannot be called humans, would come to our borders and inflict the same suffering on us that they did to the Syrian people,” Head of Iran’s Islamic Propagation Coordination Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in a speech on Sunday.

“It is because of our presence in Syria and Iraq that our lives, properties and honor are safe today,” the cleric added.

"In many parts of the world, we have responded to oppressed people’s request for help without any interest,” Jannati said, adding, however, that the story is different when it comes to Syria and Iraq because if Iran were not present there, it would be directly in danger.

It should be noted that Iran has been offering military advisory support to Syria at the request of the Damascus government, enabling its army to speed up its gains on various fronts against terror outfits.

Meanwhile, Iran’s role in Syria is reported to be addressed at the July 16 meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the Finnish capital, Helsinki. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, said last weekend that the summit offered the possibility of a “larger negotiation on helping to get Iranian forces out of Syria."