Iran, Turkey, Russia will meet in Moscow to discuss Syria: Iran

Top diplomats from Iran, Russia, and Turkey are to discuss the status quo in Syria in a meeting in Moscow later this month, the Iranian Foreign Ministry has announced.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Friday that the meeting has been scheduled for December 27 on an initiative from Iran.

He explained that Iran had been engaged in sustained efforts to help the civilians in the Syrian city of Aleppo and restore stability there.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran, he said, had been holding numerous phone conversations with some of his counterparts, including from Syria, Turkey, and Russia, and had tried to tap into all good offices and fix the ministerial talks in Moscow.

Qassemi said the Syrian crisis was a “fabricated” one and stressed that Iran had been involved in efforts to resolve it ever since the conflict began in 2011.

“The fabricated crisis in Syria and the dispatching of nameless terrorists by their Western-Arab axis of sponsors to the country at the height of developments referred to as the Arab Spring with the chimera of toppling Syria’s legitimate government have been the reasons for all these humanitarian and material catastrophes in the country,” Qassemi said.

The Islamic Republic has been the first country to produce initiatives aimed at bringing about ceasefires, allowing humanitarian aid transfer, and enabling inter-Syrian talks, the spokesperson said.

Foreign regimes seeking Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster have been channeling military assistance and financial support to the anti-Damascus militants in Syria since 2011.

Iran and Russia have been aiding the Syrian government to fight back the foreign-sponsored militancy.

Recently, Aleppo, a hotspot of the nearly six-year-old militancy, was freed by Syrian government forces. Evacuations of the civilians trapped in the few areas that remained in the hands of the militants had been going on over the past several days until Friday, when the militants began firing at corridors set up to have the civilians leave.

Western countries have been creating hype over the city, where the Syrian government had also allowed all militants to safely exit to militant-held areas in the Idlib Governorate.

Qassemi said whenever the terrorists are hard-pressed or face shortages, their Western-Arab axis of sponsors raises the cudgels on behalf of the cessation of hostilities and the protection of civilians.

Russia, which has been carrying out an aerial campaign against militancy in Syria, had already introduced several unilateral ceasefires for Aleppo before the final push by the Syrian government forces to retake the city.