Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Monday it was difficult to envision a role for Iran in Syria peacemaking efforts due to its military role in the conflict there.
Al-Jubeir made the statements during a joint conference with Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who arrived in Riyadh from Iran on a mission largely focused on seeking ways to end the war in Syria.
Jubeir repeated Riyadh’s view that Bashar al-Assad, who is supported by Iran, had to leave power if peace was to be achieved.
“The question is: what must Iran do to be part of the solution in Syria? The answer is very simple:
“It has to withdraw from Syria and it has to stop supplying weapons to Bashar al-Assad’s regime and it has to withdraw the Shi’ite militias that it sent … and then it can have a role,” Jubeir said, adding that Iran was now an “occupier of Arab lands in Syria”.
Secretary of the political committee Anas al-Abdah stated earlier that the Russian military aggression and the Iranian occupation of Syria have turned Syrian Revolution form a struggle against an authoritarian regime to a national liberation movement.
Abdah stresses that the Russia’s direct military intervention in Syria and its bombardment of civilian targets in Homs and Hama in direct coordination with the Assad regime is doing exactly what the Assad regime has been doing for over four years. He said that Russia’s targeting of purely civilian targets belies its claims about intervening to counter ISIS. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Agencies)
