Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare visit to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020, Khamenei has not met with many foreign officials. The only other head of state to meet with Khamenei in recent years is Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
During the meeting with Assad, Khamenei praised Syria’s resistance in the country’s civil war, which Iran often refers to as an “international war” given the support the Syrian opposition had from Western and regional Arab countries. He called for an expansion in relations between the two countries.
Khamenei continued, “The Syria of today is not the Syria of before the war. While the destruction [from the war] was not there, but today the respect and confidence of Syria is more than it was previously and everyone looks at Syria as a power.” Khamenei attributed Assad himself as being one of the factors in winning the war and expressed hope that Assad would use the same energy in the reconstruction of the country post-war.
Speaking of former Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the United States outside Baghdad’s airport in January 2020, Khamenei said that Syria held an important place for him and he worked as tirelessly in the Syrian war as he did in the Iran-Iraq War. He added that the ties between Iran and Syria “are essential and they must not allow them to be weakened but rather reinforced.”