Iran’s foreign minister announced on Friday that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will visit Damascus “in the near future,” marking the first such trip to Syria since the country’s civil conflict began.
According to Syria’s pro-government Al-Watan newspaper, Raisi will visit Damascus on Wednesday.
“We have drawn up a programme… for a visit” by Raisi to Syria, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told a press conference at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, adding that the trip would be “in the near future”.
The planned visit comes in the context of “multidimensional” cooperation between Tehran and Damascus, he added, according to an official Arabic translation, calling ties between the two countries “excellent”.
Iran is a key supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, providing financial and military backing to his administration during Syria’s 12-year struggle.
Since the beginning of the war, Amir-Abdollahian’s country has sent “military advisers” to assist the government.
Raisi’s scheduled travel coincides with a reconciliation between regional adversaries Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as growing Arab cooperation with Damascus.
According to Amir-Abdollahian, the Riyadh-Tehran agreement will have “positive ramifications throughout the region, particularly in Lebanon.”
Assad visited Tehran in May of last year, his sole documented visit to the Islamic Republic since the war began in 2011.
During a January visit to Damascus, Amir-Abdollahian stated that Assad had invited Raisi to visit. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the latest Iranian president to visit Damascus in September 2010.
