Iran, Russia naval presence in Syrian waters message to US: MP

Russian warships arrived at the Syrian port city of Tartus on Sunday, January 8.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/227506.html

A senior Iranian lawmaker says the presence of Iranian and Russian naval forces in Syria’s coastal waters is a clear warning to the US to refrain from any possible military adventurism.

“The United States should take Iran's warning about [refraining from any possible] military intervention in Syria seriously,” Hossein Ebrahimi, deputy chairman of Iran Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said Sunday.

He added that in the event of a US strategic mistake in Syria, Washington may receive a crushing response from Iran, Syria and a few other countries.

On Sunday, January 8, a large Russian navy flotilla led by an aircraft carrier arrived at the Syrian port of Tartus in the Mediterranean Sea for a six-day port call, to show Moscow's solidarity with Damascus.

"The port call is aimed at bringing the two countries closer together and strengthening their ties of friendship," the official SANA news agency quoted a Russian naval officer Yakushin Vladimir Anatolievich as saying.

Two Iranian Navy ships also docked in the Syrian port of Tartus on Friday, February 17, to train Syrian naval forces under an agreement signed between Tehran and Damascus one year ago.

“Syrians are against any form of foreign intervention in their country, but the United States by arming opposition groups is trying to harm the [anti-Israeli] axis of resistance in the region [in order to] affect Islamic Awakening in regional countries,” Ebrahimi added.

The lawmaker went on to say that the recent dispatch of a number of unmanned military and intelligence drones for operations in Syrian skies by the US military will only result in more solidarity among the Syrians.

NBC News quoted unnamed US defense officials as saying on February 18 that US drones are monitoring “the Syrian military attacks against opposition forces and civilians.”

Syria has been the scene of unrest since mid-March, 2011, with demonstrations being held both against and in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government.

The West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of killing protesters. But Damascus blames ''outlaws, saboteurs and armed terrorist groups'' for the unrest, insisting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.