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Iran Hosts a Summit on the Syrian Crisis - after Months of Helping Assad Shoot Protesters
(Telegraph-UK) David Blair - Iran brought together 29 countries in Tehran on Thursday for a special summit on Syria's crisis. Iran has supplied Assad's regime with weapons, funding and expertise since the onset of the Syrian uprising. Every stage of this conflict's escalation has been underwritten by Iran. So it is pretty brazen for Iran to start playing the peacemaker. Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian foreign minister, has an op-ed in the Washington Post which might serve as a textbook case of the doublethink that repressive regimes so often exhibit. Salehi writes: "We have witnessed the emergence of civic movements demanding freedom, democracy, dignity and self-determination. We in Tehran have watched these developments with delight." Iran's leaders had an odd way of showing their delight when ordinary Syrians began marching in vast numbers for freedom and dignity last year. Tehran helped Assad's security forces to shoot these brave people in the streets.