Bashar al-Assad Wins Re-election in Syria

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been re-elected in an 88.7% landslide, officials said, capturing another seven-year term in the middle of a bloody three-year-old uprising against his rule that has devastated the country. The supreme constitutional court put turnout at 73%. After the results were released, Damascus erupted into a thunderous, rolling clap of celebratory gunfire that appeared to include heavy weaponry.

A delegation of officials from more than 30 countries, including legislators and dignitaries from Iran, Russia and Venezuela, toured polling stations on Tuesday and declared Syria’s presidential election as transparent and free. (AP-Guardian-UK)

With Assad winning a third term in office in an election denounced as a sham by the West, his chief ally, Iran, is trumpeting his victory as its own. Top Iranian officials have been celebrating not only the affirmation of Assad’s continued hold on power, but also the defeat it appears to signal for three years of U.S. policy in Syria, which has as its stated goal Assad’s fall.

Iran vowed early in the conflict that it would not permit Assad to fall, and it has so far delivered on its word, pumping billions of dollars into the Syrian economy and providing weapons and training to loyalist forces. Shiite militias from Iraq, funded and trained by Iran, have provided much-needed manpower, as has the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite Hizbullah movement, which played a crucial role in turning back Syrian rebel advances over the past year.

{Andy Heller-Matzav.com Newscenter}