TEHRAN – Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has responded to press reports about an alleged meeting between high-ranking Syrian and Israeli officials at the Russian military base in Hmeimim.

“The Arab Republic of Syria categorically rebuffs the untrue news circulated by some hired media outlets about a Syrian-Israeli meeting anywhere. It underlines that circulating such news is a failed attempt by the funders of these newspapers to cast doubt on Syria’s principled and enduring positions toward the Israeli occupation,” the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday, hours after a Turkey-based think tank published an article claiming that Russia brokered a high-level meeting in December between Syrian and Israeli officials inside the Russian base in Hmeimim.

“Syria reiterates that its policies have been and still are clear and it makes decisions that serve its national interests and the just issues of the Arab nation including the Palestinian question and the liberation of the occupied Syrian Arab Golan [Heights] as well as the occupied Arab territories in accordance with the relevant international resolutions,” the statement said.

Syria also said that those standing behind these untrue allegations are seeking to drag the region into a “Zionist coalitions.”

“Syria stresses that the forces that stand behind these lies are the same ones who pant for normalization with this entity and are trying to drag the whole region into Western Zionist alliances through intimidation at times or enticements at other times. And when they fail, they resort to such naïve ways by circulating fake news,” the statement concluded.

The article in question was penned by Mohammad Sarmini, the head of Jusoor for Studies Center, on Monday and was published on the think tank’s website. The article claimed that Ali Mamlouk, head of Syria’s National Security Council, met with the former chief of staff of Israel’s army Gadi Eisenkot in Hmeimim in December.