The Bashar al-Assad regime has granted Iran the rights to build a 400 million euro electrical station in the city of Lattakia.
On Tuesday, the Russian Sputnik agency reported that the regime and Iran had agreed a timeline to implement a project “to generate environmentally-friendly gas in Lattakia, with a capacity of 540 megawatts.”
The deal, which was signed by the General Director of the Public Establishment of Electricity Generation in the Assad government, Mahmoud Ramadan, and the Chairman of the Board of the Iranian Mapna company, Abbas Aliabadi, said the first gas unit of the project would operate within 18 months and the second within 24 months, with the third steam unit within 34 months, coinciding with the implementation of a 70-km gas line feeding into the project, according to the regime’s SANA news agency.
The two sides also agreed to “begin implementing the project within the coming year after securing the materials, necessities and spare parts, in addition to working on rehabilitating the Aleppo thermal station.”
The deal was signed in the presence of the Electricity Minister Mohammad Zuheir Kharboutli, and the regime’s Ambassador in Tehran, Adnan Mahmoud, and the Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian.
Projects for Iran and Russia
Bashar al-Assad has previously stressed the need for economic cooperation between Iran and the regime and the need to expand economic relations to bring them in line with the political and military relations.
The regime has therefore announced that reconstruction projects will be available to those who stood alongside them during its war against the opposition, and it has begun to sign deals pertaining to Russia and Iran, its two main backers.
An Iranian paper has previously attacked Assad, describing him as “unprincipled and thankless” because he made reconstruction agreements with the Russians instead of with Iran.
The newspaper discussed the intentional marginalization of Iran’s role in Syria, and said it was Iran’s right to take, even if by force, its share in Syria, saying: “The right shall be taken, and despite the attempts by some in Iran to hide the facts around us losing our share in Syria, our people are aware of what is happening to us in Syria.”
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
