Iranian construction companies are to build thousands of residential units in the suburbs of Syria’s capital, Damascus, an Iranian state-run news agency has reported, Voice of America writes.
Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) recently quoted a business official with the country’s investment association, who announced that Iran would build 200,000 residential units near Damascus.
Iraj Rahbar, vice president of Iran’s Mass Construction Society, said the massive housing project has come about after the Iranian and Syrian governments signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in January 2019.
Tehran has been encouraging prominent Iranian developers to buy property in Damascus, analysts and construction industry sources in Iran said.
“This is not the first time that officials encourage developers to invest in Syria,” Amir Reza Masoumi, a Tehran-based architect, told VoA. Masoumi said that instability in Syria has dissuaded many Iranian developers from investing in the war-torn country.
Since the beginning of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Iran has been a major supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in battling Syrian rebels across the country. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terror group, and other Tehran-backed Shiite militias have played a major role in recapturing Syrian cities and towns from rebel forces, VoA adds.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says the cost of reconstruction in Syria is almost $400 billion – and nearly 65 percent of that amount would go to the housing sector, according to IMF data.
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