Deployment of Iranian Flotillas in Syrian Coasts Clear Warning to US

A senior Iranian lawmaker stressed on Sunday that the deployment of Iranian and Russian flotillas along the Syrian coasts is a serious warning against Washington’s adventurist plots against Damascus.

“The presence of Iran and Russia’s flotillas along the Syrian coasts has a clear message against the United States’ possible adventurism,” Vice-Chairman of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Ebrahimi told FNA.

“In case of any US strategic mistake in Syria, there is a possibility that Iran, Russia and a number of other countries will give a crushing response to the US,” he added.

The US and other western countries have intensified their interfering policies while the Syrian government has declared February 26 as the date for a referendum on the country’s new draft constitution that would lay the ground for a multi-party political system.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made the decision after he received the draft from a committee set up in October to draw up the new constitution.

In January, Assad said that the new constitution will replace the current one which endorses his Baath party’s dominant role.

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 armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

In October, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Bashar al-Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but the US and Israeli plots could spark some new unrests in certain parts of the country.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast had also earlier deplored any foreign meddling in Syria, and praised the reforms President Assad has pledged to undertake as “problem-solving”.

“We are fundamentally against interfering in the affairs of other countries. We think it does not solve the problems but will only make them more complicated,” Mehman-Parast said in January.

“The good reforms which have been announced by the Syrian officials are pushing the ambience towards dialogue and solving the problems, though some countries do not like this,” he said.

Assad has announced the end to the state of emergency, granted citizenship to many Syrian Kurds and promised parliamentary elections later this year. In January, he issued the latest of thousands of amnesties for those detained since the unrests began.