Baladi News
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel and Russia have agreed to establish a joint team to advance the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria, the Radio Free Europe reported.
Netanyahu made the announcement on March 3, days after he visited Moscow to try to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin that Iran must not be allowed to establish a presence in Syria.
Russia and Iran have given Bashar al-Assad crucial military and diplomatic backing throughout the eight-year war in Syria, which began with a government crackdown on protesters in March 2011.
Israel has pledged to stop Iran from entrenching itself militarily in Syria, carrying out hundreds of air strikes there against what it describes as Iranian targets in Syria and those of allied militia, including the Lebanon-based Shi'ite militant group Hizballah.
Addressing a weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that he and Putin had “agreed on a common goal: the withdrawal of foreign forces that arrived in Syria after the outbreak of the civil war.”
The Israel prime minister also said that he had made “unequivocally clear that Israel will not allow the military entrenchment of Iran in Syria” and will “continue to take military action against it."