Iran lashed out on Friday at Turkey for requesting that NATO supply it with Patriot surface-to-air missiles to deploy along the border with Syria, denouncing the step by Ankara as counterproductive.
Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani made the remarks after a visit to Damascus, a show of support by Tehran to its increasingly diplomatically isolated ally.
“The internal crisis in Syria cannot be solved through the deployment of such weapons,” Larijani, who is close to the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, said at a news conference in Beirut where he went after leaving Syria.
Photo: Reuters
Turkey’s request earlier this week follows several incidents in which violence has spilled across the border from the civil war in Syria, frequently mortar rounds falling a short distance inside. Patriots would be useful in intercepting ballistic missiles — a much more serious, but still hypothetical threat.
NATO said on Wednesday it would consider the request “without delay.”
The Syrian Foreign Ministry also criticized the Turkish move, calling it “a new provocative step.”
Larijani, who met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus earlier on Friday, said Iran was seeking a peaceful solution to the war in Syria.
“The difference between us and the others when it comes to Syria is that the others want to impose democracy through weapons,” he said. “Iran cannot accept or support such a way.”
“I don’t think democracy can be achieved through rocket-propelled grenades,” he added.
Iran is al-Assad’s strongest ally in the region, and anti-government activists accuse Tehran of sending both weapons and fighters to Syria.
Syria’s conflict erupted in March last year with an uprising against al-Assad’s regime, inspired by other Arab Spring revolts, but quickly morphed into a civil war that has since killed more than 40,000 people, according to activists.
In violence around Syria on Friday, Islamic extremists, including members of the al-Qaeda-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra group, battled with pro-government Kurdish gunmen in the northern town of Ras al-Ayan near the border with Turkey, activists said.
Kurdish activist Mustafa Osso and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had no reports of casualties. The Islamic militants entered the town earlier this month and have since clashed almost daily with the Kurdish gunmen. Both factions add to the complexity of Syria’s conflict.
When government forces withdrew from Kurdish areas in northeastern Syria in July, they were quickly replaced by Kurdish fighters from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), who would then battle rebels when they pushed their way into predominantly Kurdish areas. The Kurdish group is affiliated with the PKK, rebels fighting for autonomy in the Kurdish-dominated southeast region of Turkey.
The Islamic militants, who are fighting on the side of the rebels, have played a bigger role in the Syrian conflict in recent months and many openly say they want to set up an Islamic state. The opposition is split, with some groups strongly opposed to the influence of extremists.
In Damascus, regime forces shelled the neighborhoods of Tadamon and Hajar Aswad, where rebels and government troops have clashed for weeks, and also raided the central Damascus neighborhood of Bab Sreijeh, arresting several people there, the Observatory said. In the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, activists said a bomb blast killed four people and seriously wounded a member of a faction that has backed al-Assad in the country’s bitter civil war.
The explosion late on Thursday was a bomb placed under the car of a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the Palestinian group said. It blamed the rebel Free Syrian Army for the attack.
Yarmouk has been pulled into Syria’s fighting before, most recently earlier this month, when clashes in and around the camp killed and wounded dozens.
When the unrest began, the country’s half million Palestinians struggled to stay on the sidelines, but in recent months, many have started supporting the uprising although they insisted the opposition to the regime should be peaceful. Others, like the PFLP-GC, stood by al-Assad. Earlier this month, the PFLP-GC clashed with anti-government Palestinian gunmen in Yarmouk.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was