You have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue. When there is divergence between your policy and the people's beliefs and interests, you will have this vacuum that creates disturbance.

There's a video about one of those women who they consider as rebel or fighter who worked with those terrorists and she said "they didn't tell us how to use the chemical weapons" and one of those weapons exploded in one of the tunnels and killed twelve. That's what she said.

That's all before the crisis. We always have this kind of cooperation with Iran [Supplies, weaponry].

Talking about winning and losing is like if you're talking about two armies fighting on two territories, which is not the case. Those [terrorists] are gangs, coming from abroad, infiltrate inhabited areas, kill the people, take their houses, and shoot at the army. The army cannot do the same, and the army doesn't exist everywhere.

In the war, you lose areas, but you recapture another area. So, it is difficult to tell whether you are losing or gaining or it was a standstill. No-one has this answer.

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.

The other thing we did as government is to open gates for the civilians to leave that [ eastern part] area [in Aleppo], and at the same time for the humanitarian convoys and help to go through those gates inside that part of Aleppo, but the terrorists publicly refused any solution, so they wanted to keep the situation as it is.