Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov have agreed on the importance of launching new international efforts aimed at ending the conflict in Syria.
Zarif and Lavrov discussed Syria in a phone conversation on Tuesday, during which both stressed that the only solution to the Syrian crisis is a diplomatic one.
Earlier, a senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said that Iran and Russia must strengthen their strategic cooperation on regional and international issues, especially the ongoing crisis in Syria.
“Strong and strategic relations between the two countries are very important in the establishment of regional peace and stability and the settlement of issues,” the Leader’s advisor on international affairs, Ali Akbar Velayati, said in a meeting with Russia’s special envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentiev in Tehran.
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy over the past five and a half years, which has claimed the lives of around 400,000 people.