Syria’s Assad in Iran for talks with president

TEHRAN (Agencies)
The two leaders to discuss “bilateral and regional issues”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Tehran on Saturday and immediately went into talks with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, local media reported. Soon after a guard of honor, Assad went into a meeting with Ahmadinejad “to discuss bilateral and regional issues, including Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine,” a report by ISNA news agency said.

Assad’s visit comes just days after former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi said he asked Syria to persuade Iran to keep out of his protracted battle for the premiership with incumbent Nouri al-Maliki after inconclusive elections in March.

It also precedes Ahmadinejad’s visit later this month to Lebanon, where Iran’s ally Hezbollah is locked in a bitter war of words with Prime Minister Saad Hariri about a U.N.-backed court’s probe into the assassination of his father, Rafiq Hariri, in 2005.

Assad is accompanied by Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Shara and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.

ISNA said the Syrian president will be given a “medal of valor” by Ahmadinejad during his visit.

The visit comes less than a week after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Muallem in New York. Assad had earlier met George Mitchell, President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, who is now trying to save Palestinian-Israeli peace talks from collapse.

One main objective of the U.S. rapprochement toward Damascus, which began after Obama took power last year, is to drive a wedge between Syria’s secular ruling hierarchy and Iran’s religious Shiite rulers, analysts say.

The United States also wants Syria to distance itself from Hezbollah.

A U.S. official said after the Clinton-Muallem meeting that Syria was “very interested” in renewing peace talks with Israel as part of a Middle East settlement pursued by Washington.

But Washington, the official said, was concerned about “Syria’s activities inside Lebanon” and its relationship with Hezbollah, which Washington accuses Damascus of arming with the help of Iran in contravention of a United Nations resolution.

Assad previously visited Iran in August 2009 but the alliance with Tehran dates to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Syria cultivated Iranian-backed clerics in neighboring Lebanon and was the only Arab country that supported Iran in its 1980-1988 war with Iraq.

Iraq has been the focus of the talks between Assad and Ahmadinejad on the two trips the Iranian president has made to Syria this year. The two leaders are expected to discuss the Iraqi government crisis again during Assad’s visit.