Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and three of his deputies will attend international talks over Syria’s future in Vienna later this week.

It will be the first time that Tehran, the main regional backer of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has attended an international summit on the four-year-long war. Tehran admits that its Revolutionary Guard officers are on the ground in Syria in an advisory role, but denies the presence of any combat troops in the country.

About a dozen participants are expected in total. It was not clear if any invitations had been issued to either the Syrian government or the opposition, though neither side was present at the last talks in Vienna.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. The core talks are scheduled to take place on Friday. Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, a deputy Iranian foreign minister, told Iranian state TV: “We believe the solution for Syria is a political solution. Americans and foreign players in Syria have no choice but to accept the realities in Syria. Assad ... has the necessary readiness for talks with insurgents who are committed to a political path.”

The talks are an expansion of discussions held last week in Vienna between the US, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia that did not reach any substantive conclusion. The core talks are to take place in Vienna on Friday, but diplomats expect preparatory or bilateral meetings in the Austrian capital from late on Thursday.

The Syrian National Coalition, a political opposition group based in Turkey and supported by western powers, said Iran’s participation in the talks would undermine the political process. “Iran has only one project: to keep Assad in power ... they don’t believe in the principle of the talks,” the coalition’s vice-president, Hisham Marwa, told Reuters.

Tehran’s invitation came after the US declared it was ready to engage with Iran if it might help halt Syria’s civil war. Nearly two years ago, a similar offer for Iran to attend an earlier round of talks in Geneva was hastily rescinded by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, after fierce opposition from the US, Britain and Syrian opposition groups. But continued bloodshed and diplomatic stalemate have combined with a worsening refugee crisis and recent Russian military intervention to put pressure on the international community to find a fresh approach to ending the war.

The Iranian presence is a possible sign that separate talks on Iran’s nuclear programme have succeeded in unlocking some of the most intractable fixed positions in the Middle East.

Russia and Iran say Assad must be part of any transition and that the Syrian people will decide who governs them. The US has said it could tolerate Assad during a short transition period, but that he would then have to exit the political stage.



All previous international efforts have failed to stop the war, now in its fifth year, with over 250,000 dead and millions displaced by the conflict. Since last month, Russia has launched hundreds of air strikes targeting what it says are Islamic State and other terrorist groups. The Obama administration, Nato and others say most of the bombs are landing on moderate rebel militias, some backed by the CIA.

Meanwhile, violence continues to rage between Syria’s rebel groups and Isis, and in the Kurdish region in northern Syria, even drawing in Turkey.