Assad in Iran first time since Syrian civil war began

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad on Monday arrived in the Iranian capital for his first announced visit since the beginning of civil war in 2011, Damascus-run SANA news agency reported.

Assad held talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said the report.

Rouhani and Assad reportedly expressed satisfaction "to the strategic level reached by the relations."

Iran has been politically and militarily supporting Assad regime against opposition forces in the war-torn country.

Rouhani briefed Assad on a recent trilateral summit on Syria between Turkish, Russian and Iranian leaders held in Sochi, Russia earlier this month.

During his meeting with Khamenei, Assad congratulated him on the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Islamic revolution, and discussed regional developments, according to SANA.

The report did not clarify whether Assad returned home after the visit.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

This led to a military conflict between Syrian opposition groups and the regime over territory.

Iran has been supporting the Assad regime during the war while Russia intervened in September 2015.

Peace talks were launched in Geneva in 2012 aiming to find a political solution for the conflict while talks in Astana, Kazakhstan began in 2017 discussing a cease-fire that has been fragile so far. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict mainly by regime airstrikes targeting opposition-held areas while millions more were displaced.

During the conflict, Assad regime was accused many times by many international actors of targeting Syrian civilians by chemical weapons.