Iran and Russia condemn Syria air strike

Iran has condemned the US missile strike on Syria, saying the “unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law.”

That’s according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi. He made the comments in a report carried Friday by the semi-official ISNA news agency.

Iran is one of the biggest supporters of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. Its hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is deeply involved in the war.

Ghasemi described Iran as “the biggest victim of chemical weapons in recent history,” referencing Iraqi use of the weapons during its 1980s war with the Islamic Republic. He said Iran condemned the missile launch “regardless of the perpetrators and the victims” of Tuesday’s chemical weapons attack in Syria.

He also warned it would “strengthen terrorists” and further add to "the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region."

Putin believes strikes broke international law

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base broke international law and have seriously hurt US-Russia relations, news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying on Friday.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited as saying that the Russian leader, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, regarded the US action as “aggression against a sovereign nation” on a “made-up pretext” and as a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq.

Peskov was quoted as saying that Russia did not believe that Syria possessed chemical weapons and that the US move would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to fight terrorism, an idea that Putin has repeatedly pushed.

source: Alarabiya