Iran: US now has no pretext to attack Syria

The Iranian deputy foreign minister said Saturday that the US no longer had a pretext to attack Syria now that an American-Russian deal to eliminate the Assad regime’s chemical stockpile has been reached.

“The new situation means in fact that any pretext for the United States and certain countries to engage in military action against Syria has been removed,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said.

“We can even talk of a success by the front of the resistance [against Israel],” he added.

This was the first official reaction from Tehran, a staunch Assad ally, which has promised to react and even “destroy” Israel should the US intervene in Syria in response to an attack on August 21 which the Obama administration maintains involved the use of chemical weapons and killed over 1,400 people.

Earlier Saturday, after days of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia — another key Syrian ally — reached agreement on a framework to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons by the mid-2014 and impose UN penalties if the Assad government fails to comply.

US President Barack Obama welcomed the US-Russia deal but warned that his country “remains prepared to act” if diplomacy fails.