Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mekdad rejected Wednesday calls for Iranian forces to withdraw from Syria.
"Whether Iranian forces or Hezbollah withdraw or stay in Syria is not up for discussion because it's the business of the Syrian government. We cannot let anyone even raise this issue," he told Russia’s RIA Novosti.
He said friendly forces from Russia and advisers from Iran and Hezbollah are helping Syria and confront terrorism.
“They are not making an attempt to violate the sovereignty and territory of Syria," Mekdad said.
The Deputy Foreign Minister added that “those who ask for something like that — and this is definitely not our Russian friends — are considering the possibility of intervention in all parts of Syria, including the support of terrorists in Syria and elsewhere in the region.”
Mekdad’s comments came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that foreign armed forces should eventually withdraw from Syria, but did not provide any details.
In an indirect response to Mekdad’s position, the Hmeimim airbase posted for a week a poll on its channel on Telegram and Facebook to ask whether people support a decision to withdraw all foreign forces from Syria, including friendly ones, as a means to end the conflict in the war-torn country or whether they support keeping those forces even if it was at the expense of an ongoing war.
At the battlefield, news circulated that Iran-backed forces withdrew from the neighborhoods of the southern Daraa province towards military positions linked to the regime in the north of the province.
However, reports showed that the operation was “a re-positioning” of forces.
Sources said on Wednesday that regime forces were moving in the countryside of Deraa as Russian forces were threatening to attack Jabhat al-Nusra militants in the area.
