TEHRAN — Iran said Tuesday that it was holding the United States responsible for the fate of a group of Iranians held by Syrian rebels, as the highest-ranking Iranian official to visit Syria since the antigovernment uprising began there arrived in Damascus to show support for President Bashar al-Assad and attempt to secure the release of the hostages.
The warning by Iran, Syria’s last remaining friendly state government in the region, came after three of the 48 hostages were reported killed during an artillery attack on rebel positions by the Syrian Army on Monday and their captors threatened to kill the rest if the shelling did not stop.
The rebels, who released a video of some of the abducted Iranians on Sunday, said the captives were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps who had been heading to the airport after a reconnaissance mission in Syria. Iran said the men were part of a group of religious pilgrims, including women and children, who had visited the shrine of the granddaughter of the prophet near Damascus.
In an unusual move, Iran’s Foreign Ministry announced it had sent a diplomatic note to the Obama administration saying that “due to its open support for Syrian terrorist groups” the United States was responsible for the safety of the abducted Iranians.
There was no immediate response to the Foreign Ministry’s assertion from Washington.
The leader of Iran’s Parliament,Ali Larijani, threatened the United States and regional countries supportive of the Syrian rebels with unspecified consequences if the Iranian hostages were harmed, saying they would receive a response in “due time,” the Islamic Students News Agency reported on Tuesday. “The Iranian nation will not ignore these crimes,” Mr. Larijani was quoted as saying in response to unconfirmed reports about the deaths of three hostages.
The Iranian visitor to Syria, Saeed Jalili, met in front of state television cameras with President Assad, who had not appeared in public for two weeks.
Mr. Jalili, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator and secretary to its Supreme National Security Council, told reporters that Iran continued to support the Assad government, which contends the uprising is the work of foreign-backed terrorist gangs. Iranian state news media said Mr. Jalili, who is also a personal representative to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had also come to Damascus to secure the release of the Iranians. How he intended to achieve that goal was not clear.
On Sunday, Arabic television stations showed a video clip taken by a Syrian rebel faction showing a group of men squatting in front of Syrian flags and surrounded by armed Syrians in military uniforms. One of the captured Iranians showed what rebels said were Revolutionary Guards membership cards and a permission to bear weapons in Iran.
Al Arabiya television aired an interview with a man it identified as Abdel Nasser Shmeir, the commander of a Qaeda-linked group, Al-Baraa Brigade. He said the group would target all Iranians in Syria, whose fate would either be “prisoners or death.”
Iran, which has categorically denied any links between the group of hostages and its military forces, says the hostages were abducted by terrorists it says are supported by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
The Foreign Ministry’s note to the United States was described by the Iranian news media as saying that Iran expected the United States government to use its “influence” on the rebels, in order to secure the release of the Iranians, and that Iran would hold the United States responsible if they were harmed.
The chargé d’ affaires of Switzerland, which represents American interests in Iran, was summoned late Monday evening to the Foreign Ministry in protest over the reported deaths and was handed the note.
Iran is a longtime strategic ally of Mr. Assad and has continued to back him as the insurgency has grown from a peaceful uprising in March 2011 into a spreading civil war that has left Mr. Assad increasingly isolated.
The Iranians have announced they are organizing what they called an international meeting on Syria on Thursday, with the participation of representatives from 10 regional countries. The Iranian government has not specified which countries are attending, however.
In Iran’s official view, the United States and Israel have orchestrated events in Syria to topple Mr. Assad and undermine what Iran calls “the resistance front” -- a strategic alliance between Iran, Syria, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement and Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization, a politically powerful armed group that Israel considers a threat.
Edited By Cen Fox Post Team
