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Syria’s western-backed opposition coalition has confirmed it will take part in the Geneva two peace conference scheduled for Wednesday. The announcement came after the UN retracted its invitation to Iran to attend the talks. Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin on Monday described the failure to ensure Iran’s participation in the international conference as ‘an unforgivable mistake.’ Foad Izadi, Professor of political communication at Tehran University, spoke with the Voice of Russia correspondent to give an insight into the controversial situation.

- Wednesday’s talks on Syria are to proceed without Iran’s participation. But Russia's stance is that Iran should be among the negotiators. In your opinion, what role could Tehran play in bringing the conflict in Syria to an end?

- As you know, Iran has some influence in Syria, it has influence on the Syrian government. And this influence can be used to reach a political settlement in Syria. And this is what Iran has been saying from the very beginning. We had some countries like Saudi Arabia or Turkey, the US or France that are helping the opposition. A good portion of opposition was actually terrorist organizations that were causing difficulties in Syria. They wanted to find the military solution, they wanted to overthrow the Syrian government through a civil war, through a military means. That has not been successful.

What Iran has been saying from the very beginning, I think this idea is heard by Russia, is that for Syria you cannot a military solution, military solution is not going to work out. Parties that are involved in that conflict need to sit down and reach a political settlement. Now what has happened with the Geneva-2 talks, the US government was asking Iran to accept whatever was agreed upon in the first conference. And Iran’s response was that Iran was not at that conference and it is not possible to understand the findings of the conference when the country was not a participant of. And so Iran is very much willing to participate in Geneva-2 conference. So, without military conditions from the other side, this ultimately will happen.

- Could it play a role ‘on the sidelines’ on the Geneva Two conference, as proposed by the United States?

- Iran played a role that resulted in the Syrian conflict, we already have the problem not only in Syria but we had a bombing again today in Lebanon. So, the Syrian conflict is going at the Syria’s borders, it is having a very negative effect in the neighboring countries. They have a lot of human suffering, a lot of people are getting killed. So, Iran is not going to just watch this situation.

It is going to help to resolve this issue and the US government did not want Iran in the Syrian talks because Iran is hurting Syrian people by not using all the available means to reach a settlement. And that is the difficulty we have. But what they actually want to do is, since they couldn’t get rid of the Syrian government or supporting a civil war, they want to get rid of the Syrian government at Geneva-2 talks. And that is not going to be something that is going to happen and I am afraid that this conflict will continue and the people who are supplying arms to the opposition, which is a good number of terrorist organizations, these people are responsible for the continuation of the conflict and they have to be responsible for that.

- Can we expect any breakthrough agreements to be reached in Switzerland on Wednesday?

- It depends. What is clear to everybody is that the Syrian opposition is not going to be able to overthrow the Syrian government militarily. I think the opposition knows that, I think other governments know this fact. So, the logical conclusion would be since the military option is not available, we need to find some sort of political solution. So, the logical answer to your question would be yes, we should be able to find one. But the difficulty is that the number of countries that want to continue this conflict, they want to continue sending arms and money until they overthrow the Syrian government. Syrian government, whether you like them or not, is the legitimate government of Syria and it is not a good precedent for countries of the world to have a situation where outside powers are fighting civil war in other countries, this is against the international law. Interfering in other countries’ affairs is against the UN charter.