Senior Iranian delegation meets Syrian president in Damascus

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hosted a high-ranking Iranian parliamentary delegation on Sunday to exchange views on the latest developments in Syria. The Iranian delegation, headed by the Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi, met with president al-Assad in Damascus. During the meeting, the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest as well as the latest developments in crisis-hit Syria. On Saturday, after holding talks with Syrian Parliament's Speaker Mohammad Jihad al-Laham, Boroujerdi once again underlined that Tehran is against any form of military attack on Syria, and warned the international community of the dire consequences of a possible war on Damascus by the US and its western allies. “We, on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, once again announce to Syrian authorities and the international community our opposition to any attack and war against Syria,” Boroujerdi said in Damascus. “Any war and military strike against Syria will have a scope beyond the Syrian borders,” Boroujerdi said. On Saturday morning, an Iranian parliamentary delegation left Tehran for Beirut and Damascus to convey important messages to the Lebanese and Syrian officials from the Iranian parliament, a legislator said. "A parliamentary delegation from the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission and headed by Boroujerdi who is accompanied by Commission members Fathollah Hosseini and Javad Karimi Qoddousi, left Tehran for Lebanon Saturday morning," Rapporteur of the Commission Seyed Hossein Naqavi Hosseini told FNA. He said that during its five-day trip, the three-member delegation will visit Syria after Lebanon, and added that the members of the delegation will meet high-ranking Lebanese and Syrian officials and, if possible, officials of the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance movement. Naqavi Hosseini said that the delegation conveys three important messages from the Iranian parliament to the Lebanese and Syrian officials which include Iran's all-out support for the resistance front against Israeli aggression, voicing the Iranian government and people's opposition to any foreign military intervention in Syria and expressing the Iranian nation and government's disgust at the use of chemical weapons in Syria, which, he said, are unfortunately supplied to the rebel groups by the western governments. The US and other western countries have adopted the rhetoric of war against Syria over allegations that the Syrian government was behind a recent chemical attack near Damascus. The call for military strike intensified after the militants operating inside Syria and the foreign-backed Syrian opposition claimed on August 21 that hundreds had been killed in a government chemical attack on militant strongholds in the Damascus suburbs of Ain Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar. The Syrian government has strongly denied the claim, accusing the militants of the attack.