Iran Rejects Assad Exit as Precondition for Syria Deal

Iran said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s exit cannot be a precondition for a deal to end the country’s crisis.

“Iran rejects (demands by) those who set conditions for the resolution of the Syria crisis and say that Bashar al-Assad must leave his post and that he cannot participate in any next election,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast told reporters in Iran’s Northeastern city of Mashhad.

“This (call for Assad exit) is interference in Syria’s affairs,” Mehman-Parast stated on Thursday.

As regards Iran’s stance on developments in Syria, Ahmadinejad said, “Iran believes that the Syrian people themselves should elect their government and president.”

Also on Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad underlined that the Syrian people are the only ones who have the right to determine their own fate.

“Our efforts are aimed at making the Syrian groups close and harbingering compromise among them, holding free and fair elections, so that that the nation would decide about its fate all by itself,” Ahmadinejad said an interview with Egypt’s Nile TV.

“The prevailing conditions in Syria bother us, because regardless of who gets killed, they are all Syrian people,” he added

“In Bahrain, too, we pursue the same policy and we have told them to sit and come to terms with each other and hold free and fair elections,” Ahmadinejad said

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 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 2011, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria.