Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has underlined that Tehran would maintain and reinvigorate its alliance with Syria under any kind of condition and would defend Damascus against any possible military "aggression" by the West, Fars news agency quoted a report by Lebanese newspaper as saying.
According to the Lebanese daily Al-Diyar, Ahmadinejad's decisive remarks were made during a meeting with Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani in Tehran on Thursday.
The report said that Sheikh Hamad was conveying a message to President Ahmadinejad calling on Iran to abandon support for Bashar al-Assad's government.
The daily said that the meeting by the Qatari Emir has failed to yield his desirable result since President Ahmadinejad strongly emphasized that "any Western aggression against Syria would make every Muslim to stand beside Syria".
"That would be the action Iran will take," the daily quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Meantime, the report said that the Iranian officials have told the Qatari Emir that the US policy in the region will lead to "confrontation", and cautioned that such a confrontation would entail dire consequences for all sides.
Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi had also lashed out at the US President's remarks on Syria, in which Barak Obama called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign.
"Syria is an independent country. International conventions do not allow (other) countries to adopt an interfering stance towards another country," Salehi said.
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