Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Syria divides everyone

Iran's Fars news agency --

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani announced that the country's airbase in Hamadan is still being used by the Russian fighter jets to conduct anti-terrorism flights in Syria. "The Russian fighter jets' flights from Hamadan airbase have not stopped and we and Russia are united in fighting against terrorism and this unity benefits the regional Muslims," Larijani said, addressing an open session of the parliament in Tehran on Tuesday. He, meantime, underlined that Iran has not given control of any of its bases to any world powers, and said, "The Russian fighter jets' flights to Hamadan airbase have been aimed at refueling."

Same news agency, same day, different story --

Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani announced that the Russian airplanes which flew from the Western Iranian airbase of Nojeh for anti-terrorism operations in Syria last week returned home on Thursday after ending the first phase of their mission successfully. "The Russian warplanes were not due to stay at Hamadan airbase, rather they were planned to fly from the airbase from Tuesday to Thursday (last week) and leave. The planes didn’t leave yesterday; (as a matter of fact) they left on Thursday based on the ground operations' plans," Shamkhani said in an interview with the state-run TV on Tuesday.

To cut a long story short, it appears that Russia was so busy trolling western countries about its multi-faceted military operations in Syria that it forgot to check how the boasting about launching bombing raids from Iran would go down in Iran. The resulting domestic political unease about foreign bases and being used as part of geopolitical games by European powers was too much for Tehran.

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