Conversely, it is correct to say that bringing about peace would be the best way to fight terror.

When you use an armament, you use it to defend the civilians. You kill terrorists in order to defend civilians. That's the natural role of any army in the world.

It is difficult for anyone to tell you what is going to happen. [Middle East] is an area where everything is on the brink of explosion.

We cannot tell anything about what [Donald Trump] is going to do, but if, let's say if he is going to fight the terrorists, of course we are going to be ally, natural ally in that regard with the Russian, with the Iranian, with many other countries who wanted to defeat the terrorists.

We wouldn't have withstood for two years and a half. We would have disintegration of the army, disintegration of the whole institution in the state ; we would have disintegration of Syria if that was the case. It can't be tolerated in Syria. I'm talking about the normal reaction of the people. If it's not a national army, it cannot have the support, and if it doesn't have the public support of every sect, it cannot do its job and advance recently. It cannot. The army of the family doesn't make national war.

No doubt that the U.S. is a super-power capable of conquering a relatively small country, but is it able to control it?

Peace in Syria is not only our priority; it's a Middle Eastern priority, and when the Middle East is stable, the rest of the world is stable, because the Middle East is the heart of the world geographically and geopolitically, and Syria is the heart of the Middle East geographically and geopolitically.