Tehran Meeting, good chance for Syrian national opposition: Activist

A prominent political analyst tells Press TV that the upcoming Tehran Meeting provides a good opportunity for the National Opposition inside Syria to negotiate with the government.

Iran is set to hold a comprehensive meeting in Tehran over the issue of the 20-month crisis in Syria. The meeting will bring together representatives of various Syrian ethnicities, political groups, minorities, the opposition, and the state officials, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Amir-Abdollahian said on Tuesday.

Press TV has talked with Hamid Reza Emadi, political commentator from the Iranian capital city of Tehran, and Alaa Ebrahim, journalist and political Analyst from Damascus, to shed more light on the issue at hand. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Tell us why Iran is hosting this meeting?

Emadi: Yes, Iran says it can play a positive role in ending the bloodshed in Syria, in trying to find a political solution to the bloodshed in Syria. Tehran has already proposed a six-point plan, a six-point proposal, a very comprehensive one.

Iran is planning to create a kind of national dialogue among different political, ethnic and religious groups within the Syrian society to establish an interim government that can prepare the ground for holding parliamentary and presidential elections.

This is a political process that Tehran is initiating as opposed to the military solutions that the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are pursuing in Syria.

The US is clearly frustrated with the lack of progress in efforts to topple President Assad and the money that the American taxpayers as well as Turks, Qataris and Saudis have paid to this so-called Free Syrian Army has set any gun to waste and it has even helped arm al-Qaeda and Salafist elements in Syria.

So as we speak all eyes are on Iran as the only regional player that can help put an end to the crisis. A crisis that the US, its Turkish and Arab allies have created in the first place.

The meeting in Tehran next week between the Syrian government and the opposition as well as the representatives of different political, ethnic, and religious groups could be a good first step if you will in Iran’s efforts to convince both sides that violence is not an option and that they need to take a political path.

Press TV: When it comes to the situation in Syria, what we have been seeing, according to, of course, various meetings, Friends of Syria meetings, is only one side being represented according to critics of those meetings and that is the opposition side.

This meeting in Tehran focuses on both, the opposition and the government representatives, both sides, both parties. How are you viewing this option and this round of talks expected in Tehran?

Ebrahim: Well, putting things into perspective, I do not know how successful such an endeavor would be, for many reasons.

First of all, the opposition groups are mainly linked with their external or foreign sponsors. For example we all know that without Turkish facilitation, Turkish logistics and without Qatari and Saudi money and maybe some American and British help, none of the armed groups would have been able to carry out fighting the government for the past twenty months, that is the first thing.

The second thing that I should mention is that no one controls these armed groups on the ground completely. So if we are going to negotiate a ceasefire, if we are going to negotiate an end to violence in Syria, when in fact none of the people meeting in that conference have power over these armed groups then what is solution will we reach?

Because even if we all agree that the bloodshed should stop, the violence should stop after all. No one controls these armed groups and unfortunately, because of the endless propaganda against Iran and Russia in Syria hereby the Qatari-funded media and the Saudi-funded media Iran is not perceived by some of the opposition as an honest broker and such a dealer between the government and the opposition.

All that being said, I think that there is a very good aspect and a very positive aspect in the Iranian call for this meeting, that is that many of the internal opposition forces inside Syria, many of the opposition that some Syrian critics and some Syrian observes here call National Opposition have refused to join the newly found coalition [in Doha] and therefore they will be seeking to practice the role and the political power they have and the Tehran Meeting will be a good chance for them to stand and say: We are opposition, we are not with the coalition but we have some power on the street and we can negotiate with the government and gain something out of it.