Hammouda Sabbagh, speaker of the People’s Assembly of Syria (the Syrian parliament), confirmed this.

“Just as the Syrian army managed to confront terrorism in the battleground and defeat the terrorists, each and every one of us will frustrate the plots that have targeted Syria too by taking part in the elections,” he noted.

Assad first became Syria’s president in 2000, and has retained the capacity by winning consecutive elections. The last elections were held in 2014.

A piece of legislation was passed two years before the last polls, enabling creation of a multi-party political system in the country.

In line with the Syrian law, the candidates must have spent their last 10 years in Syria and should not be dual nationals.

Eyes are on the elections as a landmark reflecting the country’s transition towards stability from the chaos and mayhem that it began experiencing in 2011 in the form of foreign-backed militancy and terrorism.

Syria has been enlisting the assistance of its allies, including Iran and Russia, in its uphill battle against the violence, especially after the Takfiri terrorist group of Daesh entered the fray in 2014.

The Russian support has taken the form of back-up airstrikes, while the Iranian assistance has been advisory in nature.

Reinforced by the allies, the Arab country’s anti-terror struggle began reversing the militants and terrorists’ fortunes to the point that it has now liberated the biggest part of its soil.

Nasser Qandil, a well-known journalist and editor with the Lebanese newspaper al-Binaa, meanwhile, addressed the issue of the elections in an interview with Press TV.

He expected the polls to witness a maximum turnout, roundly rejecting notions created by some, including the United States, which are attempting to brand the elections as alleged rubberstamp polls.

This time, he said, the Syrians were to attend the polls, while the entire world was watching them. Therefore, it seems like the polls signified beyond simple election of a president for the country and were, in a sense, a referendum on a wide range of issues, the expert said.

The elections would, in fact, reflect the level of the Syrian people’s development in the face of hardships and US-led economic sanctions, Qandil said. The polls would also indicate the level of Syrians’ commitment to what Assad has been trying to safeguard, including Syria’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, and the fight against terrorism and occupation, the senior journalist stated.

Qandil also strictly spurned false reports alleging existence of a Russian campaign aimed at sidestepping Assad, and denied that there were any other plots towards partition of the Arab country among various parties.

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These days the market for divulging in the media space has become the lead stories and every media, which can afford to arrange an interview with any informed person, publishes an interview with him/her worth publishing and it goes viral for some time depending on the type of the interview and disclosure, and it changes hands, and of course that is the task of media.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

One of these divulgences was BBC’s interview with former Qatar Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jabor bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani which was just done last week in which he unveiled some important events and events resulted by the heavy costs which were paid to heal the anger of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in facing Iran for keeping resistance base in Syria with leadership of Syrian President Bashar Assad. In this interview with BBC, Hamad bin Jassim disclosed new secrets about Syria’s crisis and the imposed war of arrogant countries on this country which broke out in March 2011 and some of them still continue in the region.

Nine years have passed since the outbreak of the imposed war and invasion against Syria and several times the destructive role of the U.S., UK and Zionist Regime with support of the countries in the region like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Turkey has been proved, and the role of any one of the belligerents in confronting with the Resistance Axis, in its own place, has been of the most important factors in prolongation of this crisis all these years.

Now the former Qatari Prime Minister, who had a special role in this maelstrom of corruption, today due to Britain’s need has come on the stage to disclose parts of these secrets, and in his new interview has displayed another curtain of this war. On the support from Syrian opposition in the Syrian Army and encouraging them to defect the Syrian Armed forces, Al Thani says, “$30,000 was paid too any Syrian military officer who defected the Army and we paid $15,000 to military staff with lower rankings.”

He adds, “Saudi Arabia paid $50m reward to the then Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Farid Hijab for his opposition and weakening Bashar Assad.”  He then continued that since the first day of the war till now some $137b has been spent, disclosing, “Leaders of the armed groups have used the abundance of facilities and huge budgets who were receiving and became millionaires.”

“The operation for encouraging the military staff from the Army and Syrian Armed forces was often carried out with financial promises and incentives as I said before, $30,000 was paid to the senior military men and $15,000 to the lower military ranks. Riyad Hijab’s defection from the Syrian establishment was in coordination with his cousin who had been living in Jordan years ago and after defection, Saudi Arabia also paid him $50m reward,” the Qatari said.

Al Thani also talked about Manaf Tlass, an elite former Brigadier General of the Syrian Republican Guard and Assad’s close friend, saying, “Defection of Tlass happened after coordination between France’s intelligence system and Tlass’s sister Nahed who was widow of famous Syrian-born Saudi businessman merchant Akram Ojjeh who had resided in France years ago and had been granted the French citizenship.”

Former Qatari Prime Minister in his interview also points to the then Lebanon Prime Minister Saad Hariri, claiming Hariri had received $100m as reward for defections of military men and the then Syrian officials.

Al Thani further said, “Hariri played an important and effective role in Syria war and he had handed over his office in the city of Gaziantep of Turkey to Okab Sakr, the then Lebanon parliament member, to run it. Sakr also received $10m as reward for his services because he disclosed the role of the then Lebanon Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Syria’s crisis,” and reminded, “Najib Mikati is one of the other Lebanese personalities who played an important role in Syria’s crisis through Lebanon’s Police Chief Brigadier General Ashraf Rifi and received $50m as reward for playing this role.”

The former Qatari Prime Minister in his interview with BBC also touched upon the very important role of Iraqi Kurds in war against Syria especially to the very important role of Masoud Barzani’s in this regard. In the last part of his interview, Al Thani admits that they have played a great role in destroying popular revolutions of Egypt, Libya and infrastructures of Syria and Yemen and all these actions and measures have been carried out in coordination with the U.S. and its order.

What is very evident is that all-out activities of anti-Resistance Axis camp has suffered heavy costs but they have not even achieved the least success. It is wonder that this divulgence by the former Qatar Prime Minister is one of the hundreds of cost processes and uselessness for exerting pressure on the Resistance Axis that all of them with the $7,000b, revealed and mentioned, dimension by U.S. President Donald Trump has been doomed to absolute failure.

 By: Hamid Reza Naghashian

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In a post on his Twitter account, senior adviser to the Iranian parliament speaker for international affairs Hossein Amir Abdollahian dismissed as “a big lie” the rumors about a plan for the resignation of Syria’s president.

“Dr. Bashar al-Assad is the legitimate president of Syria and the great leader of the fight against Takfiri terrorism in the Arab world,” he said.

“The rumor of an agreement between Iran and Russia on his (Assad’s) resignation is a big lie and a plot from the American-Zionist media,” the Iranian official added.

“Tehran strongly supports the sovereignty, national unity and territorial integrity of Syria,” Amir Abdollahian underlined.

His comments came in response to media speculations that Iran, Russia, and Turkey may reach a consensus to remove the Syrian president and establish a ceasefire in exchange for forming a transitional government that includes the opposition, members of the Syrian government, and the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – Syrian President Bashar Assad said the army’s battle against terrorist groups in the northwestern province of Idlib is aimed at eradicating terrorism as a threat to the security and safety of the Arab nation.

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The Syria government is looking into the possibility of suing Washington in an international court over the plundering of Syria’s oil reserves, Syrian presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said in an interview with the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV.

“Syria is looking into the possibility of filing an international lawsuit against the United States, due to the fact that they steal Syrian oil,” she said in the interview, aired on Wednesday night.

Last month, Syria told the United Nations that the US had been occupying its oil fields and looting its resources as the world body remained silent on the act of misappropriation.

“The US occupies Syrian oil wells and plunders the Syrians’ revenues in the shadow of the UN Security Council’s silence,” Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari told a meeting of the 15-member body in New York on November 13.

Syria’s state-run al-Ikhbariya TV reported last week that a large US military convoy had entered oil fields in northeastern Syria, despite widespread condemnation of the deployment as being tantamount to robbery. The reinforcements, the television said, had been dispatched to the provinces of al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor from neighboring Iraq.

US President Donald Trump announced a US troop pullout from the zone of the Turkish military operation in northern Syria this fall but said that his country would not give up control over oil fields in the north of the Arab country.

The Russian Defense Ministry has said that the United States was smuggling Syrian oil to other countries, while oil caravans are guarded by US private security companies and special forces.

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In a meeting between Iranian foreign minister and Syrian president, the two sides emphasized Iran’s role in Syria’s reconstruction.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that President Bashar al-Assad isn’t just defending Syria; he is defending the entire region against terrorism.

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says all US-backed Kurdish armed militants are “traitors” to the Syrian nation, ramping up the rhetoric particularly against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which are mainly active in northeastern areas of the Arab country through receiving vital substantial air and armament support from Washington. 

The Syrian leader made the remarks in a meeting with a high-profile official and economic delegation from Russia, led by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Monday, Syria’s official news agency, SANA, reported.

“When we talk about those referred to as ‘the Kurds’, they are in fact not just Kurds. All those who work for a foreign country, mainly those under American command… are traitors” regardless of their names, Assad said.

The YPG is the main part of a larger coalition of fighters — the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — which was engaged in operations aimed at liberating Raqqah, the former de facto capital of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the war-torn country. Washington considers the SDF, which also includes Arab militants, as its main proxy force fighting on the ground in Syria.

PressTV-Syria will fight US-backed militia: Assad aide

A top aide to the Syrian president says the country’s army will fight any force, including the US-backed militia, to fully liberate the Arab country.

Damascus regards the Kurdish militia coalition as an illegitimate foreign force operating on the Syrian soil, just as is the case with the so-called US-led military coalition that has been conducting airstrikes against purported Daesh targets since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

In contrast, Russian jets have been conducting air raids against Daesh targets and those of other terror outfits inside Syria at the Damascus government’s request since September 2015. The airstrikes have helped Syrian forces advance against anti-Damascus militants, who have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country since 2011.

PressTV-US may use fleeing militants to fight Assad: Putin

The Russian president says the US has turned a blind eye to the information provided by Moscow about Syrian terrorists traveling to Iraq.

President Assad further said Washington tried to focus the international community’s attention solely on Daesh in an attempt to distract the world’s attention from other terror groups, the most prominent of them being the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham Takfiri terrorist group, which was formerly known as al-Nusra Front. He noted that Takfiri terrorists were still wreaking havoc in Syria due to the support they received from the West.

PressTV-Putin felicitates Assad on Syrian army victories

In a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, the Russian president hails the Syrian army’s achievements in the fight against Takfiri terrorists.

The Syrian leader also touched upon the issue of Syria’s next year presidential election, saying that he would welcome any United Nations role in the Syrian vote as long as it was linked with the country’s sovereignty.

He also called Russia a friendly country to the Syrian nation, saying Moscow adopted an honorable stance towards Syria and its people during the past six years of fighting against brutal militancy inside the Arab country. Assad also noted that it was natural for Russia to be an important partner in the process of reconstruction of Syria in various sectors.

Rogozin, for his part, underlined the considerable progress in Damascus-Moscow economic cooperation and the efforts made by a Syrian-Russian joint committee for expanding this cooperation further to benefit the two countries. The Russian official said that the joint initiative would also include exploitation of a Syrian phosphate deposit.

Rogozin promised that his respective country would be fully prepared to help Syria rebuild its energy facilities.

The Russian delegation included deputy ministers of foreign affairs, defense, economic development, energy, transport, industry, and trade, in addition to the Russian envoy in Damascus and directors of major Russian companies.

The meeting was also attended by Syrian deputy prime minister and Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, along with the Syrian ministers of finance, petroleum, electricity, and transport.

Assad: France standard bearer for supporting terrorism in Syria

In an interview following his meeting with the Russian delegation, Assad took France to task for supporting terrorist groups that have been wreaking havoc in Syria since 2011, noting that Paris was in no position to talk about peace in the country.

“France has been the standard bearer of support for terrorism in Syria since the early days of the conflict,” he said, adding, “It is in no position to evaluate a peace conference.”

“Whoever backs terrorism has no right to talk about peace or to interfere in Syrian affairs,” the Syrian president emphasized.

Assad remarks came after Paris accused his government on Friday of obstructing peace talks.

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