Iran Welcomes Syria Ties with Arabs, Says Nuclear Deal Close

Syria's Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, left, receives his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian, center, upon his arrival at the airport in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (AP)
Syria's Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, left, receives his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian, center, upon his arrival at the airport in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (AP)
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Iran Welcomes Syria Ties with Arabs, Says Nuclear Deal Close

Syria's Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, left, receives his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian, center, upon his arrival at the airport in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (AP)
Syria's Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, left, receives his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian, center, upon his arrival at the airport in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (AP)

The foreign ministers of Iran and Syria, two allies of Russia, discussed the war in Ukraine and other developments during a meeting in Damascus on Wednesday. Syria's top diplomat said Moscow is defending its people.

Faisal Mekdad spoke to reporters in Damascus after his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian, held talks with President Bashar al-Assad, Mekdad and top security official Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk.

Amirabdollahian welcomed the reconciliation approach by the United Arab Emirates toward Syria. He added that Tehran is close to reaching an agreement on its nuclear program with world powers.

Iran is a strong ally of Assad and has sent thousands of Iran-backed fighters from around the region to bolster Syrian government forces against opponents in the 11-year Syrian conflict. Russia has also supported Assad militarily, turning the tide of the war in his favor. The Syria war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

Speaking about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Mekdad said “Russia is defending its right in protecting its people (by pushing) away the NATO presence on its direct border.”

“Russia is defending us all and is defending its sovereignty,” Mekdad added.

State news agency SANA said that during Assad's meeting with Amirabdollahian they discussed the conflict in Ukraine and they both agreed that “international balance should not be subjected to dangerous shocks through which Western countries threaten international peace and security."

During his visit, Amirabdollahian discussed the latest developments in Iran’s negotiations to restore Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. He also discussed Assad’s visit to the United Arab Emirates last week, which marked his first to an Arab country since the Syria war broke out, and meetings of the constitutional committee in Geneva between the Syrian government and opposition.

“We welcome and we are satisfied with what some Arab countries are doing by normalizing relations with Syria,” Amirabdollahian said.

Amirbdollahian said in Farsi that strategic relations between Iran and Syria are at their best. He later made a rare comment in Arabic, saying: “We are in the same trench, and we support Syria’s leadership, government and people.”

Like Iran, Russia is a strong ally of Syria and joined the war in 2015, which helped Assad’s forces regain control of much of the country. Russia has hundreds of troops deployed in Syria and an air base on the Mediterranean coast.

Nuclear negotiations nearly reached completion earlier this month before Moscow demanded that its trade with Iran be exempted from Western sanctions over Ukraine, throwing the process into disarray. Negotiators have yet to reconvene in the Austrian capital, and its unclear exactly what hurdles lie ahead.

The Iranian official said he believes that Tehran is close to reaching an agreement over its nuclear program and put the blame for delays on the American side, which he said should take “a realistic stance.” He did not elaborate.

Amirabdollahian’s visit comes two weeks after two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were killed in an Israeli strike near the capital Damascus.

Days later Iran claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck near a sprawling US consulate complex in northern Iraq, saying it was retaliation for repeated Israeli strikes in Syria. The Revolutionary Guard said it fired off 12 cruise missiles at what it described as a “strategic center” of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, a claim denied by Iraqi officials.



Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.