In an extensive interview published Thursday covering his ties to Iran, accusations of chemical weapons use, and a potential meeting with President Donald Trump, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad referred to the U.S. military as “terrorists,” alongside the Turkish and Saudi armies.
Assad sat down with the journalists of Greece’s Kathimerini newspaper and answered a wide range of questions regarding the Syrian civil war and his continued control of Damascus. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) published an English-language transcript of the interview and video on Thursday.
Responding to questions about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s invasion of northern Syria, Assad outlined his objectives in the civil war.
“First of all, we are fighting the terrorists, and as I said, the terrorists for us are his [Erdogan’s] army, they are the American army, the Saudi army,” he explained. “Forget about the different factions and who is going to finance those factions; at the end, they work for one agenda, and those different players obey one master: the American master.”
Assad accused Erdogan, whose invasion of northern Syria specifically targeted the U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish militias there, of “implementing the American agenda, and the same goes for the other countries in this war,” excluding his allies Russia and Iran.
“The Turkish, French, whoever, they are all enemies; as long as they came to Syria illegally, they are our enemies,” Assad concluded.
Assad has identified any entity against his rule of Syria as a “terrorist” and launched military campaigns against them, particularly civilians who oppose him and his Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. Following an American airstrike on Syrian military assets in response to evidence of a chemical attack on civilians, Assad compared American and Turkish interventions to terrorist attacks. While not calling the troops of those respective nations terrorists, he said, “When you talk about the Turkish invasion, when you talk about the American troops — again, it’s an invasion — and when you talk about the terrorists on the ground, it’s one entity, there’s no difference.” READ MORE
