President Rouhani's Turkey visit a turning point in relations between D-8’s two important members

9 June 2014
Source: developing 8.org

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, who pays a historic visit to Turkey with an Iranian delegation composed of one vice president, seven ministers and a number of businessmen, described partnership between Turkey and Iran as 'strategic' and 'strong' with future plans to deepen relations in every field.

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani arrived in Ankara early June 9 for crucial talks on a number of key issues in his first official trip to Turkey since he took over the presidency last year.

Rouhani was welcomed by Turkish President Abdullah Gül at an official ceremony. The two presidents announced they have decided to improve bilateral relations at the joint press conference following their meeting. “[Rouhani] is the first Iranian president who has paid an official visit to Turkey in the last 18 years. This is why the visit is historic,” Gül said, describing Iran as “an old, valuable friend.”

“The visit carries our bilateral relations forward in every area. We expressed our common will during the meeting,” Gül said, stressing that several deals from culture to economy have been agreed upon. “Our relations are not just about two countries. They are important for the whole region and the world,” Gül said.

Rouhani emphasized the joint target of increasing bilateral trade from $15 billion to $30 billion. “Instability [in the region] is not in the favour of anyone in the world,” Rouhani said, adding that integrating Turkish railroads with Iranian ones in the border town of Bazergan was one of the deals agreed upon during the June 9 meeting.

The two presidents also said they will meet businessmen from both countries on June 10 to encourage them to invest in the respective countries.

Iran and Turkey have signed 10 accords of cooperation in a meeting both presidents attended. The agreements reportedly were intended to ‘deepen bilateral relations between Tehran and Ankara’ more than ever. Rouhani and Gül attended the joint meeting to sign the agreements. The agreements addressed cooperation in cultural and scientific exchange programs, tourism, cultural heritage, post, standard institutes, and two customs agreements.

Rouhani’s Meeting with PM Erdogan

Turkey will bolster its trade ties with neighbouring Iran by speeding up the implementation process of a preferential trade agreement signed in January. We had set a goal during my visit to Iran in January: to raise the trade between the two countries to $30 billion by 2015," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a joint press conference with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on 9 June.

Erdogan said the trade between Turkey and Iran stood at $22 billion in 2012 before dipping to $14.5 billion in the following year due to economic sanctions imposed on Tehran. "As part of our endeavour to fix this, we have reaffirmed the necessity of forming a High Council of Strategic Cooperation and establishing a preferential trade zone between the two countries," he said. Trade volume between Turkey and Iran stood at $3.2 billion in the first quarter, according to Turkey's official statistics office.

For his part, Iranian President Rouhani said Erdogan and himself exchanged views on bilateral ties and regional developments. Calling on Turkish businessmen to invest in Iran's railways and ports, he said Iran and Turkey reached agreements to boost cooperation in energy, transportation, tourism and banking. Also discussed in the meeting were international and regional issues as well as cooperation between the two states in international organizations such as the U.N., Organization of the Islamic Cooperation and especially the D-8. 

Describing Turkey as one of the most important countries in the region, Rouhani said his administration’s foreign policy priority was to increase relations with neighbouring countries. Recalling his meeting with Erdogan in Tehran in January, Rouhani said important agreements on transportation, customs, tourism, culture, security and political relations would be signed during the talks. 

The two officials reiterated their objectives to increase the trade volume to $30 billion by the end of 2015. Erdogan said Turkey is planning to ratify the agreement of preferential trade with Iran until the end of this month so that they could reach their objective.

In Turkey visit, Rouhani heads a delegation of his cabinet members including ministers of foreign affairs, roads and city planning, oil, information technology, interior, intelligence, culture and Islamic guidance, and economic affairs.

Link:http://developing8.org/Latestnews.aspx?NewsTitle=President%20Rouhani%27s%20Turkey%20visit%20a%20turning%20point%20in%20relations%20between%20D-8%E2%80%99s%20two%20important%20members.

BBC Report Confirms Iranian Soldiers Are Running The Show In Syria

Jun. 3, 2013

Michael B. Kelley

Source: Business Insider

Thousands of Lebanese Hezbollah militants are amassing around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in preparation for an assault on the city, Loveday Morris of The Washington Post reports.

  The deployment demonstrates the group's complete commitment to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and may profoundly affect the 26-month conflict.

“The Aleppo battle has started on a very small scale; we’ve only just entered the game,” a senior Hezbollah commander told The Post. “We are going to go after strongholds where they think they are safe. They are going to fall like dominoes.”

The commander had been overseeing five units in Qusair, a town near the Syria-Lebanon on border where Hezbollah has been spearheading a regime offensive to retake the town for the last three weeks.

The increased presence of the militant group, in addition to the arrival of sophisticated military technology such as Iranian surveillance drones and Russian anti-mortar systems, has helped solidify recent gains made by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

(Meanwhile, The U.S. is witholding millions pledged to helped the Syrian opposition.)

Hezbollah's preparations to attack Aleppo, which is nowhere near the Lebanon-Syria border, significantly raises the stakes in the war.

“A deployment so deep into Syria and in such a crucial place would be a clear indication that Hezbollah’s role in Syria was never limited to defensive aims but is geared toward helping Assad score major victories,” Emile Hokayem, a Middle East-based analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the Post.

Aleppo is Syria's largest city and served as the country's commercial hub before the war.
David Barrett of The Telegraph reports that the metropolitan population, about three million before the war, has grown to about 3.5 million since the opposition seized half the city last July.

Rebels, primarily al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, have been administering city services in areas under their control while a stalemate persists.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/hezbollah-is-preparing-to-attack-aleppo-2013-6#ixzz35cGPhzgO

Hezbollah Is Launching An Offensive That Will Profoundly Change The Syrian War

Jun. 3, 2013
Michael B Kelley
Source:Business Insider


 Thousands of Lebanese Hezbollah militants are amassing around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in preparation for an assault on the city, Loveday Morris of The Washington Post reports.

The deployment demonstrates the group's complete commitment to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and may profoundly affect the 26-month conflict.

“The Aleppo battle has started on a very small scale; we’ve only just entered the game,” a senior Hezbollah commander told The Post. “We are going to go after strongholds where they think they are safe. They are going to fall like dominoes.”

The commander had been overseeing five units in Qusair, a town near the Syria-Lebanon on border where Hezbollah has been spearheading a regime offensive to retake the town for the last three weeks.

The increased presence of the militant group, in addition to the arrival of sophisticated military technology such as Iranian surveillance drones and Russian anti-mortar systems, has helped solidify recent gains made by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

(Meanwhile, The U.S. is witholding millions pledged to helped the Syrian opposition.)
Hezbollah's preparations to attack Aleppo, which is nowhere near the Lebanon-Syria border, significantly raises the stakes in the war.

“A deployment so deep into Syria and in such a crucial place would be a clear indication that Hezbollah’s role in Syria was never limited to defensive aims but is geared toward helping Assad score major victories,” Emile Hokayem, a Middle East-based analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the Post.

Aleppo is Syria's largest city and served as the country's commercial hub before the war.

David Barrett of The Telegraph reports that the metropolitan population, about three million before the war, has grown to about 3.5 million since the opposition seized half the city last July.
Rebels, primarily al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, have been administering city services in areas under their control while a stalemate persists.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/hezbollah-is-preparing-to-attack-aleppo-2013-6#ixzz35cD3zBcx

Iran Is Increasingly Calling The Shots For Assad In Syria

Jul. 24, 2013
Michael B Kelley
Source: Business Insider

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been forced gradually to cede power to Iran to prop up his regime during the grinding conflict in Syria.

The implications for the Middle East could be dramatic.

"Whether Assad stays or goes is becoming irrelevant," a diplomat in the region told Khaled Yacoub Oweis of Reuters. "The conflict is now bigger than him, and it will continue without him. Iran is calling the shots." 

Assad has been increasingly leaning on Iranian troops, Hezbollah guerrilla fighters from Lebanon, and Shi'ite militias from Iraq as he preserves his elite loyalist units after 28 months of fighting. 

Consequently, Hezbollah and Iranian troops have become directly involved in the command structures of Assad's forces.

"Now the operations are well-planned and the objectives are precise," Rami Abdel, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP in April. "This is because Iranian officers are on the ground, leading operations, while new Iranian weapons conceived for this kind of battle are flowing in."

Iran has had troops on the ground to fight for Assad's regime in August, and Quds forces from the foreign operations arm of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) may have been there as early as 2011.

More recently Iran has been training Syrian militias in guerrilla tactics while Iranian officers and Hezbollah fighters lead in battle.

"[Assad] can no longer call a division head and tell him to bomb the hell out of this neighborhood or that," Abu Nawar, a Jordanian military analyst, told Reuters. "His command has been eroded and the command structure is now multinational."

Right now the fighting inside Syria is most intense in Homs, which is a key corridor between Damascus, Lebanon, and the coastal Alawite heartland.

There is also talk that Assad is aiming to form an Alawite state in that area to sequester himself and his less fervent sect of Shia Islam from wider Sunni-Muslim war playing out in Syria and Iraq.
Martin Chulov and Mona Mahmood of the Guardian report that Assad asked a well-known diplomatic figure "to approach the former Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, late last year with a request that Israel not stand in the way of attempts to form an Alawite state."

(Previous reports of sectarian cleansing of Sunnis along the coast corroborate that notion.)
Iran is primarily concerned with maintaining the Shi'ite crescent — which includes Shi'ites from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria — and is fully determined to keep its geographical link to Lebanon intact.

 Essentially, Iran holds sway over a huge swath of the Middle East right now (i.e. the Shi'ite crescent), with the crux being Syria.

The ongoing war in the area could drag on for years, and the outcome will alter the balance between Shias and Sunnis as well as between Iran and Israel/U.S.

As Iranian-American journalist Ali Gharib recently wrote in a Daily Best piece about the hawkish stance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "The U.S. and Iran are on a collision course, one that ends very badly for everyone involved."


 
 Link: .businessinsider.com/iran-is-calling-the-shots-in-syria-2013-7.