Iran reiterates halt to arms shipment to Syria

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian once again renewed Iran’s strong opposition to the West’s support for the armed rebels and terrorists in Syria, and stressed that arms shipment to the Muslim country must come to a halt. “The Geneva II conference on Syria will bear fruits if arms shipments and dispatch of terrorist groups to Syria come to a halt,” Amir Abdollahian said in a meeting with Kazakh Foreign Minister Arlan Idrisov on the sidelines of the 40th Foreign Ministerial Meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in the Guinean capital, Conakry, on Tuesday. The Iranian deputy foreign minister underlined that the Syrian crisis only has a political solution and the Geneva II conference can pave a suitable ground for a Syrian-Syrian dialogue to end the crisis in the country. In separate meetings with foreign ministers of Egypt, Senegal and Palestine in Conakry, Amir Abdollahian discussed bilateral ties and regional developments. During meeting with Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki, the Iranian deputy foreign minister underlined that Israel is the main cause of crisis in the region, and said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran will continue its support for Palestine.” “We believe that the secret of the Palestinians' success is their resistance, endurance and firmness and the Zionist regime with its aggressive behavior has proven its lack of commitment to any deal or agreement,” Amir Abdollahian said. Syria was hit by a violent unrest since mid-March 2011, where the Syrian government accuses foreign actors of orchestrating the conflict by supporting the militant opposition groups with arms and money. Early in March, a ranking member of the US marine troops deployed in Afghanistan told FNA that the Pentagon made the decision to send a major part of its light and semi-heavy weapons systems and military equipment to the Syrian rebels along with its pullout from Afghanistan when the former US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, was still in office. "The decision to send our arms and weapons systems in Afghanistan to the rebel groups in Syria was originally made when the former US Secretary of Defense was in his final days of office, yet the Pentagon has also received the approval of the new Secretary, Chuck Hagel, as well," said the source who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his information. "One of these cargos consists of the light and semi-heavy military tools, equipment and weapons that the US army has gathered and piled up in Kandahar Base and plans to send them to the rebels in Syria in the form of several air and sea cargos and through Turkey and specially Jordan," he explained. “These weapons and arms systems include anti-armor and missile systems, rocket-launchers and rockets and tens of armored Humvees," the source added, explaining that senior war strategists in the Pentagon believe that they can change the scene of the war in Syria in the interest of the rebel groups with the help of these cargos, specially the shoulder-launched missile systems and the multipurpose Humvee vehicles. The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), commonly known as the Humvee, travels as fast as 150 kilometers per hour under different weather conditions and in various geographical climates, and various types of machineguns, rocket-launchers and weapons systems can be mounted on this vehicle. As the US continues its pullout from Afghanistan, rebels in Syria have failed to make any more advancement and the US, EU, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were forced to soften their tone on the future of the almost two-year-long conflict in the country after they found that the war of attrition has rather worked in the interest of President Assad and his troops. This, military experts say, has apparently made the US change the war strategy in Syria and open new fronts in the country.