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Iran Foreign Minister Expected in Lebanon, Syria in Coming Days


FILE - Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian speaks during a press conference after the second 3+3 Regional platform summit in Tehran, Oct. 23, 2023. (WANA via Reuters)
FILE - Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian speaks during a press conference after the second 3+3 Regional platform summit in Tehran, Oct. 23, 2023. (WANA via Reuters)

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian will travel to Lebanon and Syria to discuss various regional issues, Iranian and Syrian media reported on Thursday.

Iranian media said he would be in Lebanon on Friday. Syrian daily Al-Watan, which is close to the government, said Amirabdollahian would be in Damascus "early next week" for a visit with senior officials.

Al-Watan said the foreign minister would discuss current developments, including Israeli attacks on Syria and the ongoing war in Gaza, and that he would travel onward to Qatar.

Sources told Reuters last week that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps had pulled back some of its officers from Syria following a string of Israeli strikes there that had killed senior commanders.

Iran's ambassador to Syria Hossein Akbari said in remarks on Thursday that Iran remained "present in Syria."

"We will not take any step without coordination with the government. And wherever the Syrian side asks us, we will be present. We are present in Syria with the same force, and we have never withdrawn," Akbari said.

The Guard has suffered one of its most bruising spells in Syria since arriving a decade ago to aid President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. Since December, Israeli strikes have killed more than half a dozen of its members, among them one of the Guard's top intelligence generals.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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