Syria Rejects West’s Calls for Severing Ties with Iran

TEHRAN (FNA)- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Tuesday that his country may not cut ties with Iran, reiterating that Tehran and Damascus would remain two strategic partners in the region.

“Syria will stand with Iran on all the major strategic issues,” Assad said during an interview with a local television station, rejecting demands by the West and Israeli regime to cut ties with the Islamic Republic.

“Only one situation would distance Syria from Iran, and that is if Tehran sided with Israel, and if America sided with the Arabs,” he said, laughing.

Tel Aviv has a clear desire to see a drop in the level of cooperation between Iran and Syria. Israeli defense officials have long maintained that the Iranian-Syrian alliance poses a major threat to the Zionist regime.

Commenting on negotiations with Israel, the Syrian president said that classifying the talks as “negotiations” was too strong a term.

“What’s happening today is not negotiations, but they are called negotiations in the media,” Assad told the interviewer.