Mr. Bahram Ghasemi attended his weekly press conference on Monday, where he said that Russia-Turkey ties would not affect trilateral meeting to which Iran would also contribute; “Moscow meeting will be a platform to improve diplomatic coordination on Syria; Iran does not have a new position on Aleppo; we believe realities of the situation in the region had been the major force in Aleppo strategic changes; however, Iran has grave concerns about humanitarian crisis and terrorist groups’ sabotage of delivering aid and the process of evacuation,” Ghasemi added.
“The conditions in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria could have been better; however, fueling conflict with direct support by certain countries proved effective in deferring hopes of better situation,” he said. Asked whether Kuwaiti officials would visit Tehran in the near future, Ghasemi said there was no clue that Kuwait could possibly represent the whole [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council; however, “Iran will welcome any visit to Tehran to address differences; there is no special date for such a visit, and time will tell us what to expect,” he responded.
“Mass demonstrations before Iranian embassies in the region, especially in Turkey, was an issue which the Foreign Ministry addressed through summoning the country’s ambassador to Tehran; the date and time was rather unconventional; however, the embassy remained undamaged; Turkish police should have informed the embassy of such events,” Ghasemi was responding to questions of frequent rallies organized just after Aleppo events. “Aleppo solely provides for vested interests to organize rallies, and no other legitimate cause would be the driving force behind demonstrations; Russian embassies have also been a target; in Turkey, we have good amount of evidence indicating that some specific parties would demonize Iran inside Turkey.”
“The prediction that Assad government would be toppled within weeks back in 2011 proved fleeting with the country gradually gaining ground against terrorists; now, the anger and frustration in part of the supporters of terrorists and enemies of Assad are quite understandable, since the status quo would no longer favor them; so, they seek to find a scapegoat to direct the blame on and to quench their anger and to justify their defeats on the ground in Syria,” Ghasemi told the press, directed on so-called ‘West-Arab-Hebrew’ front.
Still on a different issue, Ghasemi believed the visit by Yukia Amano of IAEA to Tehran earlier this week addressed possible technical issues, and Mr. Amano departed for Vienna with absolute satisfaction about the fact that Tehran had been working on its commitments on the JCPOA.
SH/3853927