Arch-rivals Saudi Arabia
and Iran announced they would attend international talks in
Vienna on Friday on the Syrian conflict, in what will be their
first meeting to discuss the four-year-long war.
Saudi Arabia said it aimed to gauge during the talks the
willingness of Iran and Russia, the main backers of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad and his government, for a peace deal,
Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Wednesday.
"The view of our partners ... was that we should test the
intentions of the Iranians and the Russians in arriving at a
political solution in Syria, which we all prefer," al-Jubeir
told a news conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and three of
his deputies will travel to Vienna, Iranian state news agencies
said. It will be the first time that Tehran has been represented
in international discussions on the Syrian crisis.
Iran says it supports a political solution in Syria, but
says Assad should be part of the process. Opposition groups, and
their regional backers including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey,
say Assad must leave power as a precondition for peace.
Al-Jubeir said Saudi Arabia and its allies would hold a
separate meeting on Friday to seek "the time and means of Bashar
al-Assad's exit".
The White House said the peace talks could only work if "all
key stakeholders" were invited, adding that Iran's participation
should not overshadow the efforts to end the Syrian crisis.
"The United States is prepared to work with any nation,
including Russia and Iran, to resolve the conflict in Syria,"
White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters.
Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Lebanon, the European Union and France
also said they would attend Friday's talks, which come a day
after a smaller round of negotiations between the United States,
Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Around a dozen participants are expected in total.
It was not clear whether any invitation had been issued to
either the Syrian government or the opposition. Neither side was
present at the last talks in Vienna.
Speaking at a news conference in Riyadh with his Saudi
counterpart, British foreign minister Philip Hammond said he
hoped the meeting would encourage dialogue between the rivals,
who back opposing sides in conflicts across the Arab world.
"Saudi Arabia and Iran are the two most important and
powerful countries in this region. It is very much in the
long-term interests of the region that eventually these two
countries are able to talk to each other, are able to discuss
differences, are able to seek solutions peacefully," Hammond
said.
The Syrian National Coalition, an opposition group based in
Turkey and backed by Western powers, said Iran's participation
in the talks would undermine the political process.
"Iran has only one project - to keep Assad in power ... They
don't believe in the principle of the talks," said the
coalition's vice-president Hisham Marwa.
The secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council,
Ali Shamkhani, told reporters during a visit to Pakistan that
Tehran would join the Syria talks "with no pre-conditions".
A senior Western diplomat in New York said on Wednesday: "We
have got to start from a fairly low base given that you've got
Russia and Iran on one side and everyone else on the other."
"It would be successful if (the meeting) came off and didn't
completely fall apart," he added.
Turkey, which backs the anti-Assad opposition, has no
objection to Iranian participation in the Syria talks, a
diplomatic source in Ankara said. Turkish foreign ministry
officials were not immediately available for comment.
Fighters from Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are
currently taking part in ground offensives being waged by the
Syrian army and its allies with Russian air support.
Revolutionary Guards Deputy Commander Hossein Salami said in
an interview on state TV on Monday that Iran had increased its
military presence in Syria in recent months to help its army in
response to a request from the Assad government.
An Iranian political analyst based in Frankfurt, Ali
Sadrzadeh, said: "Iran was always saying that without it the
talks on the Syrian crisis would not succeed. What has changed
is that Russia and the United States have come to the same
conclusion."
He said the July nuclear deal between Iran and world powers
paved the way for Tehran's participation in the international
arena, adding: "The Vienna talks will be Iran's first test."
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who will take
part in the talks, welcomed Iran's participation. After a phone
call with the Iranian foreign minister on Wednesday, she
tweeted: "Important to have all relevant regional actors at the
table on Friday in Vienna."
"This is an acknowledgement of reality, four years into the
conflict," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the
European Council on Foreign Relations in London. "Having Iran at
the table complicates the goal of getting rid of Assad, but
potentially opens the door to some kind of de-escalatory track."
Some analysts suggested compromise remained far off.
Karim Sadjadpour, senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, said: "There are no tangible signs that
Iran is prepared to abandon Assad, or sees a way to preserve its
interests in a post-Assad Syria."
"Iran has consistently argued that Syria's future is a
choice between Assad and the jihadists."
Patrick Clawson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, said the idea that external actors were
key to producing a political solution was misplaced.
"The difficulty we face is that the involvement of Iran is
only going to inflame the opinion, the attitudes of some groups
in Syria," he said.
For more details, watch the full report in the video above