"Turkey has lost the ground in Syria," Rapporteur of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Nozar Shafeyee quoted Amir Abdollahian as saying during a meeting with the commission on Sunday.

According to Shafeyee, the Iranian deputy foreign minister reiterated that the Ankara government is trying to change the situation against Syrian President Bashar Assad with the help of its allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the US.

Amir Abdollahian, meantime, reminded that the Syrian nation is presently in an unfavorable humanitarian situation.

The Iranian deputy foreign minister also pointed to the ceasefire in Syria, and said, "The ceasefire provides the Syrian army with a break after several years of war... ."

He reiterated that Iran supports Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and said, "The (Syrian) people's will will be the source of peaceful political developments in Syria."

In relevant remarks in November, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a message to his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu called on the Ankara government to boost its cooperation with Iran in fighting terrorism.

"Iran is ready to cooperate with Turkey in fighting terrorists and extremists," Zarif said in his message.

The Iranian foreign minister underlined that all countries should join hands in the ongoing fight against the terrorist groups.

In relevant remarks late last month, former MI6 agent and EU foreign policy adviser Alastair Crooke said the cessation of hostilities in Syria almost certainly does not mean the end of the Syrian war, as US, Turkish and Saudi proxies are using the timeout to regroup, rearm and prepare.

The Syrian ceasefire deal, brokered between the US and Russia, almost certainly will not last long and definitely does not mean the end of the war on the ground, Alastair Crooke, former MI6 agent, who was Middle East advisor to Javier Solana, High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union (CFSP) from 1997 to 2003, said.

The British diplomat analyzed the possible intentions of the parties of the deal.

“And one of the intentions is to have a break, a pause, I think, so that your own proxies — the American, Turkish, Saudi proxies — can regroup, can rearm and prepare,” he therefore suggested.

“In a sense, this is a timeout, which is why I said that I don’t think this is the beginning of the end. I think there is another chapter in this, and what we are going to see and why are they doing this, is because precisely they want to rearm, to push back the rapid advance that is taking place across Syria of the coalition forces led by Syrian army, and to stop that progress, in order to give them position to continue their negotiations, in order to have something in their hand to negotiate with.”

At the moment, Crooke explained, for the rebels, the negotiating hand is vanishing day by day and if the Syrian forces reach Raqqa, they will have almost nothing.

Their major purpose is stopping the government forces getting to Raqqa, because then what’s there to negotiate about? The negotiations are taking place on the ground, in the battlefield, Idlib and Aleppo in the North of Syria, he suggested; FNA reported.

S/SH 11