“Since the start of the Syrian crisis, the West thought that the government in Syria will rapidly collapse, but now it is clear that the Syrian government is strong despite the will of the US and certain regional Arab countries,” Velayati said in a meeting with Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vitaly Naumkin in Tehran on Wednesday.
He said that the strength and resistance of the Syrian government against the terrorist groups in the last three years vindicated the viewpoints of Iran and Russia in opposition to the military option against Syria.
Velayati expressed “conditional” optimism about the future of Syria, but said a settlement of the problem and crisis in the Muslim state “depends on cooperation among Iran, Russia, Iraq and a number of other countries which still believe in political solution”.
Iran has always underlined a negotiated end to the crisis in Syria, reiterating that a halt in the arms flow to anti-government militants is the prerequisite to any diplomatic solution to the Syrian problem.
In November 2012, Iran hosted a meeting between the representatives of the Syrian government and opposition to encourage them to start talks to find a political solution to their problems. The National Dialogue Conference kicked off work in Tehran mid November with the motto of “No to Violence, Yes to Democracy”.
The meeting brought together almost 200 representatives of various Syrian ethnicities, political groups, minorities, the opposition, and state officials.
The conflict in Syria started in March 2011, when sporadic pro-reform protests turned into a massive insurgency following the intervention of western and regional states.
The unrest, which took in terrorist groups from across Europe, the Middle-East and North Africa, has transpired as one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history.
As the foreign-backed insurgency in Syria continues without an end in sight, the US government has boosted its political and military support to Takfiri extremists.
Washington has remained indifferent to warnings by Russia and other world powers about the consequences of arming militant groups.
