Iran says it will prevent forcible overthrow of Assad’s government

TEHRAN, Dec. 17 (MNA)- Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that Iran will prevent any Western plan to forcibly overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government from succeeding. Salehi made the remarks in an interview with the Paris-based news website arabi-press.com. “Iran will never allow a Western plan to forcibly topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to be implemented and succeed whether through current acts of interference and sending weapons and hiring armed groups or through direct intervention,” he stated. “What Western countries and certain regional countries are now doing in regard to Syria is an obvious violation of all regulations and earthly and divine values… and is a hostile approach that cannot be justified under any circumstances,” he said. “Such actions should be halted, and it is what we have communicated to the United Nations, Lakhdar Brahimi (the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria), and a number of regional countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia within the framework of a six-point plan,” he added. In its six-point plan to help resolve the Syrian crisis, Iran has called for a halt to the violence by both sides simultaneously, the peaceful settlement of the crisis without foreign intervention, and the launch of talks between the Syrian government and the opposition. The Iranian official also said that foreign powers’ efforts to change the Syrian government have reached their peak, but Iran will make every effort and will use all its resources to prevent the change of the political system in the Arab country. In addition, Salehi said that Tehran will continue supporting a Syrian national dialogue and believes that the only way to implement reforms and meet the demands of the great Syrian nation is to conduct domestic negotiations without any foreign intervention.