ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Syrian President Bashar al-Asaad visited the Iranian capital of Tehran and held meetings with the country's supreme leader and president on Sunday, discussing various topics including Iran's continued support of the Syrian regime in the civil war and reiterating their staunch opposition to Israel.
In the meeting with the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Assad affirmed that “the course of events proved once again the correctness of the visions and approach that Syria and Iran have followed for years” in regards to the region and its challenges, while also touching on the “historical” ties the counties share, Syrian state media reported.
Khamenei affirmed his country’s “support for Syria to complete its victory over terrorism and liberate the rest of the Syrian lands," the media outlet added.
Tehran shares very strong ties with the Syrian government and is a key ally in Assad's quest to regain control of territory taken from the regime by rebels and other forces in the country's more than decade-long civil war. It regularly provides military and financial support to Assad's government with many Iran-backed militias active in the conflict.
The relationship between Iran and Syria "is vital for both countries and we should not let it weaken, but we should strengthen it as much as possible," Khamenei said according to a statement published on his website.
Assad’s visit to Tehran is the second of its kind since the civil war erupted in 2011, with the first being in 2019.
During the trip, fingers were also pointed at Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel.
In 2020, the Trump administration announced the brokering of the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sudan, Bahrain, and Morocco to normalize diplomatic and economic relations with what the supreme leader calls the "Zionist regime."
"Some leaders of our neighboring countries sit and stand with the leaders of the Zionist regime and drink coffee together, while the people of these countries take to the streets and chant anti-Zionist slogans on Quds Day," Khamenei stated as per his website.
Thousands of Iranians every year take to the streets of the country on the last Friday of Ramadan to mark Quds (Jerusalem's Arabic name) Day, an annual day of protest initiated by Iran to support the Palestinian cause against Israel.
The normalization of ties broke decades of Arab consensus that the Jewish state should not be recognized in the absence of a peace agreement establishing a Palestinian state.
Israel frequently conducts airstrikes in Syria, targeting Iran-affiliated militias, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah group which supports the Syrian army, in what it says is an effort to prevent them from securing further ground along its borders.
While Jerusalem rarely acknowledges the hundreds of airstrikes it has carried out on regime-controlled areas of Syria, it does so for the bases of Iran-backed militias it targets, AP said in March.
The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 following an uprising against the Assad family's decades-long rule, has so far claimed the lives of over 350,000 people, both civilians, and fighters, according to UN numbers.
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
