Russia, Iran vow response to US led air strikes on Syria

MOSCOW: Russia and Iran have expressed dismay at the overnight US led airstrikes in Syria on Saturday after US President Donald Trump warned Russia and Iran over support for Bashar al-Assad.

 “The evil and the despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children, thrashing in pain and gasping for air,” he said in reference to the alleged chemical attacks.

“To Iran and Russia I ask, what kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children,” said Trump.

“No nation can succeed in the long-run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants and murderers, dictators. In 2013 President Putin and his government promised the world that they would guarantee the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons. Assad’s recent attack and today’s response are the direct result of Russia’s failure to keep that promise. Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path..” added.

Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov warned that “such actions will not be left without consequences.”

Statement by the Ambassador Antonov on the strikes on #Syria:
A pre-designed scenario is being implemented. Again, we are being threatened. We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences.
All responsibility for them rests with Washington, London and Paris. pic.twitter.com/QEmWEffUzx

— Russia in USA ?? (@RusEmbUSA) April 14, 2018

Russia’s Deputy Head of the state Duma’s defence committee Alexander Sherin likened US President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

Trump “can be called Adolf Hitler No 2 of our time because, you see, he even chose the time that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union” he said in reference to the early morning invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in 1941.

“First the ‘Arab spring’ tested the Syrian people, then Islamic State, now smart American rockets. The capital of a sovereign government, trying for years to survive under terrorist aggression, has been attacked, said the Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

“You have to be quite abnormal to attack Syria’s capital just at the moment when it had a chance for a peaceful future,” she added.

A statement released by the Russian defence ministry said that “more than 100 cruise missiles and air-to-land missiles were fired by the US, Britain, and France from the sea and air at Syrian military and civilian targets”. The statement added that “a significant number” of the missiles had been shot down by Syrian air defences.

Syrian state television said that the attacks are “a flagrant violation of international law and demonstrate the contempt of these countries for this law.”

There were protests on the streets of Damascus over the airstrikes, with protesters waving Russian, Iranian and Syrian flags.

Meanwhile, Iran has also reacted sharply to the attacks.

“Undoubtedly, the United States and its allies, which took military action against Syria despite the absence of any proven evidence … will assume the responsibility for the regional and trans-regional consequences of this adventurism,”  Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media.

“The United States and its allies have no proof and, without even waiting for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to take a position, have carried out this military attack,” said the Iranian Foreign Ministry.