Iran, Syria Widening Cooperation in Science

Syrian Minister of Higher Education Muhammad Amer Mardini and Iranian deputy health ministers in a meeting in Tehran on Tuesday underlined the need for the further expansion of mutual cooperation in scientific fields.
During the meeting in the Iranian capital today, Mardini and Iranian officials explored avenues for bolstering and reinvigorating bilateral ties in scientific and technological fields, including exchange of university students and professors.

The Syrian minister of higher education voiced his country’s preparedness to admit Iran’s medical university students to the Syrian universities.

“We hope that the two countries’ health ministries would be able to sign a memorandum of understanding similar to the MoU signed between Iranian and Syrian ministries of higher education,” Mardini said.

The Syrian minister, meantime, called for boosting cooperation with Iran in area of stem cell science.

Iranian Deputy Health Minister Seyed Amir Hossein Ziyaee, for his part, said that the Iranian health ministry is pursuing the policy of exchanging university students and admitting foreign students, and added, “Given the capacity of Iranian medical universities, we are ready to admit foreign university students at all levels.”

Iran and Syria have had close ties in the past three decades. Syria was one of the most important partners of Tehran in war time with Iraq (1980-1988), during which Damascus closed the Iraqi oil pipeline carrying the country’s crude to the European markets.

Since 2011, after protests of some Syrian opposition groups turned into insurgency due to the meddling of certain western countries and their regional allies, Iran has been one of the main strategic partners of President Bashar Al-Assad’s legal government.

Iran has also held some conferences to find a peaceful way to end ongoing bloodshed in the Muslim country.