‘West can’t stop Syria resisting Israel’

An Iranian Foreign Ministry official has downplayed the Western efforts to push Syria out of the forefront of the ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel, Press TV reported.

“The US and Israel want to…detach Syria from the axis of resistance; if not they want to change the regime in Damascus,” said the Director General of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Persian Gulf and Middle East Department, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, a Press TV correspondent reported.

He highlighted the lifting of the emergency law in Syria, the introduction of changes in the country’s electoral process, and media laws, as well as other instances of political reformation as examples of ‘true reforms’ implemented by the Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The official asserted that vigilance observed by the Syrian people had foiled the Western ploy “to split Shias and Sunnis and…to give the impression that President Assad cannot run the country.”

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes.

The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and US-Backed armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

Syrian state TV has also broadcast reports and images of seizure of arms caches and confessions by terrorist elements, pointing to how they obtained weaponry from foreign sources.