Iranian Majlis speaker Ali Larijani has revealed that the Islamic Republic has held talks with Syrian opposition groups, MNA reported.
Iranian diplomats had met members of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as ultraconservative Salafis and liberals and encouraged them to accept "democratic reforms through peaceful behavior, not violence", Larijani told the Financial Times on Tuesday.
Larijani did not identify names of opposition members nor the exact dates of the meetings, which he said took place in Iran and were continuing, but conceded that little progress had been made.
Syrian Islamists admit they have had contact with people close to the Iranian government but say that Tehran has tried to convince them to give up their demands for the fall of the Assad government, rather than discuss a political transition.
Larijani accused unnamed countries of blocking Tehran's efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Syria.
At a foreign ministerial meeting in Cairo on Monday, Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian foreign minister, proposed that observers from a contact group on Syria comprising Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey be dispatched to the crisis-hit country.