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From: TT
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Photo: Pavel Golovkin / AP / TT
Walid al-Muallim, right, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif during a meeting in Russia in 2017.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallim has died, the regime said.
The cause of death is not yet clear. But the 79-year-old political veteran, who was already in office when the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, had long suffered from heart problems.
Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Makdad is now expected to take office, according to a source close to the regime.
al-Muallim was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2006 and has also been Deputy Prime Minister since 2012.
During the war, he had to deal with the country’s close ties with Iran and Russia, and its increasing dependence on them, whose military support has been crucial as the forces of dictator Bashar al-Assad retake much of the territory previously occupied by the rebels.
al-Muallim has clearly endorsed the expanded military role of Moscow and Tehran in Syria.
– I am ready to be one of Hassan Nasrallah’s soldiers, he said as early as 2006, referring to the leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite movement, Hezbollah, which in recent years has participated with thousands of soldiers on the side of the Syrian regime.
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