SYRIA’S deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, has hailed Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement’s assistance to Syria, and its struggle for survival, saying the pair’s withdrawal from the Arab country is not up for discussion.
‘This topic is not even on the agenda of discussion, since it concerns the sovereignty of Syria. We cannot let anyone even raise this issue,’ Faisal Mekdad told Russia’s Sputnik news agency on Wednesday. He also said that those who demanded the pullout of the Iranian military advisers and Hezbollah forces from Syria ‘are considering the possibility of intervention in all parts of Syria, and elsewhere in the region.’
He was responding to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s threatening of Iran with the ‘strongest sanctions in history’ and ‘regime change’ if it does not comply with a list of 12 US demands, including the withdrawal of ‘all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria’.
Speaking directly to the Iranian people, Pompeo called for regime change, stating that ‘President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif … are your elected leaders. Are they not the most responsible for your economic struggles? The United States believes you deserve better.’
He claimed, ‘People are angry at the regime that keeps for itself what it steals from the people.’
He added on the international scope of the struggle: ‘We will track down Iranian operatives and their Hezbollah proxies operating around the world, and we will crush them. Iran will never again have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East.’ It is the United States that is to dominate the Middle East and then the planet as a whole.
The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has slammed the address made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, while the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that the world cannot accept that Washington makes unilateral decisions for all nations.
On May 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that foreign forces in Syria had to leave the Arab country because the Syrian government had succeeded in its fight against large-scale terrorism.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Putin told Assad that ‘With the start of the political process in its most active phase, foreign armed forces will withdraw from Syrian territory.’
A few days earlier, the world was astonished to see Israeli PM Netanyahu going to Moscow on Victory Day to get assurances from President Putin that Russian forces would not get involved against Israeli air interventions to bomb Syrian army, Hezbollah and Iranian targets. Netanyahu’s misson was successful, as was his contention that Russia would not supply Syria with the advanced S-300 missile system.
Putin’s stance that all foreign forces will leave Syria has been taken by the US as a signal that Russia not only wants to see Iran and Hezbollah forces withdraw from Syria, but will not get in the way of Israeli air attacks, now using the most advanced US aircraft, to try to deal with these allies of Syria. With Iran out of Syria, the US and Israel will be free to establish the Zionist state over the whole of Palestine, on the bones of the Palestinian people, and to mount an onslaught against Hezbollah in the Lebanon.
There can be no viable imperialist military onslaught against Iran, if Hezbollah, and a free Palestine and Syria are threatening their rear. The object of Russian intervention into Syria was defensive, to prevent thousands of Islamists being transferred to the Caucasus when Assad had been removed. However, the intention of the imperialists remains the same, to bring down Assad, use Israel to attack the Lebanon, engage in regime change in Iran and then move against Russia through the Caucasus.
President Assad and the Syrian people have every right to invite Hezbollah and Iran to defend Syria. Their victory will create the conditions to establish the state of Palestine and to drive the imperialist powers out of the region.
The workers of the world must support the liberation movement of the Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese and Iranian peoples. The workers of Russia must continue their support for Syria. The best way to do this is for Russian forces to stay in Syria and for the Russian workers to restore the USSR.
