To have or not to have [chemical weapons] is a possibility, but to depend on what media says is nonsense, or to depend on some of the reports of the intelligence is nonsense and that was proven when they invaded Iraq ten years ago and they said "Iraq has stockpiles of WMD" and it was proven after the invasion that this was false ; it was fraud. So, we can't depend on what one magazine wrote.

Politics is about realities, not logic.

Al-Qaeda has one ideology and they go back to the same leadership in Afghanistan or in Syria or in Iraq. That's the question. You have tens of thousands of foreigners, that's definitely correct. We are fighting them on the ground and we know this.

If you want to be transparent with your people, do not do anything cosmetic, whether to deceive your people or to get some applaud from the West.

To have opposition ? We have it, and you can go and meet with them. We have some of them within the government, we have some of them outside the government. They are opposition. We have it.

When our interests matched, the Americans have been good to us, and when the interests differed, they wanted us to mold ourselves to them, which we refused.

Freedom and democracy are nothing but instruments, just like stability. The goal is called progress and growth. Anyone who puts freedom ahead of stability is hurting growth.