Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met on Sunday with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, the semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported.
Araghchi traveled to Damascus to meet with the Syrian leader, who returned Saturday night to the capital from Moscow, where he met with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, a major ally.
Prior to departing for Damascus, Araghchi told reporters at a Navy Day ceremony held on Kish Island in southern Iran that Israel was behind the unrest in Syria, the Turkish Anadolu Agency reported.
“We believe that after the (Israeli) Zionist regime’s failure, the enemy is trying to implement its sinister plots of destabilizing the region through these terrorist groups,” Araghchi said, referring to the opposition forces that seized control in Aleppo on Friday.
“The Syrian army will once again be victorious over these terrorist groups as in the past,” the Iranian minister declared.
According to Middle East Institute (MEI) director Charles Lister, Araghchi is scheduled to visit Turkey on Monday.
The foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey and Russia held several phone conversations on Saturday to discuss the events in Syria, and pledged to coordinate their efforts to stabilize the situation.
On Friday evening, opposition forces led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS) militant group (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, linked to Al Qaeda), seized control over Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo in a surprise offensive that began Wednesday.
By Saturday evening, HTS and its followers had secured control over Aleppo and were starting to do the same with the city of Hama, to the south.
On Sunday Russian and Syrian fighter jets began airstrikes on the city of Idlib, home to HTS and other rebel forces, with multiple wounded reported by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
A Tasnim correspondent meanwhile denied reports Saturday night that an attempted military coup was taking place in the Syrian capital, claiming the reports were “just a psychological operation of terrorists and their supporting media.”
The news agency added, however, “Despite the complete peace in Damascus, all units of the Syrian army in this city and its suburbs are on full alert to deal with any possible conspiracy and sabotage.”
Syrian state television and the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) website remained offline on Sunday night, after having gone off the air on Saturday evening. It’s not clear why.
