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FILE- In this archival photo of April 4, 2018, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a group photo in Ankara, Turkey. When the Russian, Turkish and Iranian Presidents meet in Tehran on Friday, September 7, all eyes will be turned to diplomacy to avoid a bloodbath in Idlib, the northwestern province of Syria and the last stronghold of the country. ;opposition. The three leaders whose countries are all under US sanctions have an interest in working together, but Idlib is complicated and they have little in common. (Tolga Bozoglu / Pool Photo via AP, File)
Tehran, Iran – The Iranian, Russian and Turkish presidents began a meeting Friday in Tehran to discuss the war in Syria, with all eyes on a possible military offensive to resume the last bastion of Idlib held by the rebels.
The summit between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could determine whether diplomacy stops all military action. Even before that starts, an air strike on Friday morning hit the southern border of Idlib, killing at least one person.
The leaders had bilateral talks each before the start of the meeting in Tehran. As photographers took pictures of the three leaders Rouhani, smiling, reached both their hands.
Each of the three nations has its own interests in the war that has been going on for years in Syria.
Iran wants to keep its foot in the neighboring Mediterranean nation of Israel and Lebanon. Turkey, which has backed opposition forces against Syrian President Bashar Assad, fears an influx of refugees fleeing a military offensive and destabilizing areas in Syria. And Russia wants to maintain its regional presence to fill the void left by the long uncertainty of the United States as to what it wants in the conflict.
"The Tehran summit can bring peace and reconciliation in Syria or aggravate the mess created by the ongoing violence perpetrated mainly by the Assad regime," writes Ilnur Cevik, Erdogan's senior adviser in the Daily Sabah newspaper.
The northwestern province of Idlib and surrounding areas are home to about 3 million people, nearly half of whom are civilians displaced from other parts of Syria. It also includes about 10,000 intransigent fighters, including Al Qaeda-linked militants.
For Russia and Iran, two allies of the Syrian government, it is crucial to reclaim Idlib to carry out what they see as a military victory in the Syrian civil war after Syrian troops have taken over almost all major cities .
A bloody offensive that creates a massive wave of deaths and displacement, however, goes against their discourse that the situation in Syria is normalizing and could undermine Russia's longer-term efforts to encourage the return of refugees. and bring Western countries to invest in Syria postwar reconstruction.
The streets of Tehran were silent on Friday, the second day of the Iranian weekend. The country's official IRNA news agency has called the summit a potentially "peace and security agreement" in Syria.
A former Iranian diplomat, Ali Akbar Farazi, told IRNA that the summit shows that solving regional problems "in a fair way and consistent with the interests of all parties" remains important for all three countries.
For Turkey, the stakes could not be higher. Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees and has closed its borders to new arrivals. It has also established control zones in northern Syria and has several hundred soldiers deployed in 12 observation posts in Idlib. A government attack creates a nightmarish scenario of hundreds of thousands of people, including militants, fleeing to its borders and destabilizing the cities of northern Syria under its control.
Naji al-Mustafa, a spokesman for the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation, said on Friday that his fighters were prepared for a battle that they said would trigger a major humanitarian crisis.
"The least the summit can do is prevent this military war," he said.
On Friday, a series of air strikes struck villages in southwestern Idlib, targeting insurgent positions and killing a fighter, said Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. the man based in Britain. Abdurrahman said that suspected Russian fighter jets carried out the attack.
Turkey also does not want to see another Kurdish-controlled area along its border, as it already does in northern Iraq.
Cevik, a top Erdogan advisor, also did not kick his Daily Sabah article, saying: "Assad, backed by Iran's real estate and Russian air power and its use of chemical weapons from which massive gains for the Damascus regime.
"You still need moderate opposition groups that represent the Sunni masses in Syria to achieve a viable political solution and lasting peace in this country," he wrote. "Iran and Russia are the fighting forces in Syria and have brought blood and tears."
All three countries are under US sanctions under the administration of President Donald Trump. Although America has some 2,000 troops and outposts in Syria, Trump said he wanted to withdraw those forces after the war with ISIS removed the vast territories he had previously held from extremists. in Iraq.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, warned that any military offensive at Idlib "would be a reckless escalation". The United States will chair a meeting of the US Security Council on Friday about the possible offensive.
"There is no military solution to the Syrian conflict," Haley said in a statement on Wednesday. "The brutal regime of Assad – supported by Russia and Iran – can not continue to attack and terrorize Syrian citizens."
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Associated Press editors Zeina Karam and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
