I have to be very clear and very honest. I'm not asking [ the American officials] to believe if they don't want to believe. This is reality, I'm telling you the reality from our country. We live here, we know what is happening, and they have to listen to people here. They cannot listen only to their media or to their research centers. They don't live here ; no one lives here but us.

The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy. If you want to go towards democracy, the first thing is to involve the people in decision making, not to make it.

Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East. That is why we are in contact with most of the problems forever, let us say, whether directly or indirectly.

Nobody knows [who they are] because when [terrorists] are dead and they are killed, they don't have any ID.

When you talk about humanitarian, it doesn't only mean to offer the people the help, the food, their necessary needs for their life. The first thing, if you ask the Syrian refugees, for example, the first thing they want is to go back to their country.

Today, the Iraqi citizen sees that America is coming and wants to occupy his country and kill him, and he is willing to experience for himself what happened in Palestine.

We are fully free, not partially, fully free, in everything related to the future of Syria.