Beirut: Syrian President Bashar Al Assad said in an interview published on Sunday that the West is fuelling the devastating war in his country, now in its eighth year, with the aim of toppling him.
Al Assad told the Mail on Sunday that Western nations have lied about chemical attacks in Syria and supported terrorist groups there, while Russia has supported his regime against the foreign “invasion.”
Al Assad reiterated his long-held position that the uprising against his rule was part of a conspiracy to remove a leader that did not go along with Western policies in the region. Syria is allied with Iran and Russia, and has had turbulent relations with the West. Syria is technically at war with Israel, which occupies the Syrian Golan Heights, but a ceasefire has largely held since the 1970s.
“The whole approach towards Syria in the West is, ‘we have to change this regime, we have to demonise this president, because they don’t suit our policies anymore’,” Al Assad said. “They tell lies, they talk about chemical weapons, they talk about the bad president killing the good people, freedom, peaceful demonstration.”
He denied Moscow is running the show in his war-torn country, his regime operates independently of its Russian and Iranian allies.
Al Assad slammed the United States and British military actions in Syria as “colonial” while praising supporter Russia.
“We’ve had good relations with Russia for more than six decades now, nearly seven decades. They never, during our relation, try to dictate, even if there are differences,” he told the British newspaper.
Al Assad admitted his regime has disagreed with Russia and Iran throughout the country’s seven-year conflict.
“That’s very natural, but at the end the only decision about what’s going on in Syria and what’s going to happen, it’s a Syrian decision,” he said.
Moscow intervened militarily in Syria’s conflict in 2015, when his forces were struggling to hold territory against rebel fighters.
Syria’s conflict began in 2011 with peaceful protests against the Al Assad family’s decades-long rule. The regime’s violent response to the protests, and the eventual rise of an armed insurgency, tipped the country into a civil war that has claimed nearly half a million lives.
Since then, Western nations and independent experts have accused the regime of carrying out several chemical weapons attacks, most recently in April, in an attack near Damascus that reportedly killed dozens of people and prompted Western air strikes. The regime has denied ever using chemical weapons.
Al Assad also dismissed reports that Israel has conducted recent air strikes in Syria with tacit Russian cooperation. Russia has provided crucial military support to Al Assad’s forces, waging an air campaign since 2015 that turned the tide of the war in Al Assad’s favour. Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group have also provided extensive military support.
“Russia never coordinated with anyone against Syria, either politically or militarily,” Al Assad said. “How could they help the Syrian Army advancing and at the same time work with our enemies in order to destroy our army?”
Israel carried out a wave of air strikes against Iranian forces in Syria last month. The lack of any Russian response, despite the heavy Russian presence in the skies over Syria, suggested that Moscow might have been notified ahead of time.
Al Assad said he has remained in office through more than seven years of war because he has “public support.”
“We are fighting the terrorists, and those terrorists are supported by the British regime, the French regime, the Americans and their puppets whether in Europe or in our region,” he said.
“We are fighting them, and we have public support in Syria to fight those terrorists. That’s why we are advancing. We cannot make these advances just because we have Russian and Iranian support.”
