The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
February 20, 2017

Iran Warns U.S. Not to Send More Troops to Syria
------------------------------------------------

Iran's foreign minister has warned the United States not to send more
ground troops to Syria, following a CNN report that said the Pentagon is
considering a plan to deploy a large conventional force to Syria. Iran
has been backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the U.S. has
been targeting ISIS, while supplying some training and support to forces
fighting Assad. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Iranian
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said more U.S. troops in Syria
would fuel extremism.

Mohammad Javad Zarif: "I believe the presence of foreign troops in an
Arab territory, against the wish of the government and the people of
those territories, is in and of itself a recipe for these demagogues,
these extremists, to rally behind and to gain new support and to recruit
new fighters, who are disenfranchised youth, who have been deprived of
their dignity because of certain policies that have been followed."



.