Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi travels to Damascus on Wednesday where he is due to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This is the first time since 2010 that an Iranian head of state has made this trip.
The two-day official visit comes amid diplomatic warming in the region, marked by the thaw in relations between the two Middle East heavyweights, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The last Iranian president to visit Damascus was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in September 2010, before the war in Syria killed about half a million people.