March 31 (Reuters) – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Tuesday that his country will stay out of the U.S.-Israeli war against \u200cIran unless Syria is subject to aggression and has no diplomatic \u200csolutions.<\/p>\n
“Unless Syria is targeted by any party, Syria will remain outside any conflict,” the Syrian \u200bpresident said at an event hosted by think tank Chatham House in London.<\/p>\n
“We do not want Syria to be an arena of war. But unfortunately, today, things are not governed by wise minds. The situation is volatile and \u200crandom,” the president said.<\/p>\n
The \u2060month-long conflict has spread across the region, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies, and threatening to send the global economy \u2060into a tailspin.<\/p>\n
“We want Syria to have ideal relationships with the entire region, with Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and world powers like the UK, France, \u200bGermany and \u200bthe U.S. I think that Syria \u200bis qualified to start a \u200cstrategic relationship network,” he said, responding to a question on whether Syria would stay neutral while the conflict goes on.<\/p>\n
Syria has been keen to stay on the sidelines of the regional conflict that has pulled in neighbouring countries, including Lebanon, where armed group Hezbollah is locked in fighting with \u200cIsraeli ground troops, and Iraq, where Iran-aligned \u200bfactions have launched drone and rocket attacks.<\/p>\n
Syria sent \u200bthousands of troops to its \u200bwestern border with Lebanon and its eastern border with \u200cIraq earlier this month. Syria’s defense \u200bministry said the \u200bdeployment was part of efforts to “protect and control the borders amid the escalating regional conflict”.<\/p>\n
“We had enough war. We paid a large bill. \u200bWe are not ready \u200cfor another war experience,” Syria’s president said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey, \u200bChris Thomas in Mexico City, and Catarina Demony in London; Editing \u200bby Chris Reese and Deepa Babington)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 31 (Reuters) – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Tuesday that his country will stay out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[381,13399,3643,95,6409,17942],"class_list":{"0":"post-45558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-syria","8":"tag-chatham-house","9":"tag-diplomatic-solutions","10":"tag-regional-conflict","11":"tag-syria","12":"tag-syrian-president","13":"tag-war-against-iran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116325738714884971","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}