Whenever you have a war, the civilians and the innocents will pay the price. That's in any war, any war is a bad war.

Sometimes you may kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands with very primitive armaments.

On the border area with Lebanon where [Hezbollah forces] want to protect themselves and cooperate with us, but they don't exist all over Syria.

Politics is about realities, not logic.

If you ask Americans whether they've been successful at sealing the border with Mexico, they'll tell you that it's a very difficult proposition.

In the eighties, we asked for international coalition against terrorism after the Muslim Brotherhood crisis in Syria when they started killing, of course they were defeated at that time. We asked for the same thing. So, this is a long-term policy that we base our policy on for years now.

It's not religious war, but Al-Qaeda always use religions, Islam - actually, as a pretext and as a cover and as a mantle for their war and for their terrorism and for their killing and beheading and so on.