FM says Iran's response would be tough if forces attacked in Syria
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Nov 19, 2023
Tehran, IRNA -- Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has said that his country would give a "tough" response if Iranian military advisors in Syria came under attack from the US.
The top diplomat made the comment in an interview with UK-based daily The Financial Times, which was published on November 17, in response to a question on the attacks which the United States has said were conducted in eastern Syria on facilities used by Iranian forces and their allied groups.
Amirabdollahian said that one of those centers, located near the Iraq border, was used by Iran's military advisors in the fight against terrorists, but "that place was empty of any Iranian forces or supplies at the time of the attack."
"No Iranian forces were struck", he told the FT, adding that Iran's response otherwise would have been "tough".
Resistance groups in Iraq have carried out dozens of attacks on US bases and interests in that country and neighboring Syria in retaliation for Washington's support for the Israeli regime in its war on Gaza.
The US has said that it has conducted attacks in response, and warned Iran over strikes on American bases, arguing that the resistance groups are "proxies" of the Islamic Republic.
Also, Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement and Yemen's Ansarullah resistance movement have launched attacks on Israeli positions in response to its brutalities against people in Gaza.
In his interview with the FT, Amirabdollahian said that Hezbollah and other resistance groups in West Asia are not Iran's proxy forces, saying that "each had an independent political identity."
He meanwhile warned that these groups "are not indifferent towards the killing of their Muslim and Arab peers in Palestine".
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