BICOM

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Iran’s presence in Syria is non-negotiable but insisted that Iran has no fixed military bases in Syria.

When probed during an interview with Iranian channel al-Alam News if he had asked Hezbollah to leave Syria, Assad said the group would remain until “Hezbollah, Iran, or others believe that terrorism has been eliminated”. He added that if there is “a need for Iranian military bases, we will not hesitate”.

“Hezbollah is a basic element in this war—the battle is long, and the need for these military forces will continue for a long time,” he said.

Iranian and Russian support has been critical to Assad’s regime during the seven-year civil war. Israel is concerned that Iran is building up military forces in southern Syria, an area largely not under regime control, from which it can attack Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated the threat posed by Iran and its proxies in Syria at an international security conference in Jerusalem yesterday. He told delegates that Iran’s presence “is a recipe for a re-inflammation of another civil war — I should say a theological war, a religious war — and the sparks of that could be millions more that go into Europe and so on … And that would cause endless upheaval and terrorism in many, many countries”.

“Obviously we are not going to let them do it. We’ll fight them. By preventing that — and we have bombed the bases of this, these Shi’ite militias — we are also offering, helping the security of your countries, the security of the world,” he said.

There has been speculation that Israel and Russia agreed for Iran and its proxies to withdraw its forces from Southern Syria and not take part in any regime offensive to capture the area. However, a Syrian human rights monitoring group reported yesterday that Hezbollah’s leadership refused to accede to a Russian request that its forces vacate a number of locations in southwest Syria. The group said that Hezbollah is sporadically “renewing its ranks” in military posts near the Syrian-Lebanese border, proof that it has no intention to evacuate the area.