Bashar al-Assad Quotes

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.

Two years and a half and Syria is still withstanding against the United States, the West, Saudi Arabia, the richest countries in this area, including Turkey, and, taking into consideration what your question implies, that even the big part or the bigger part of the Syrian population is against me, how can I withstand till today ? Am I the superhuman or Superman, which is not the case !

We learned that lesson very well, especially in the eighties, that terrorists cannot be used as a political card, you cannot put it in your pocket, because it's like a scorpion; it will bite you someday.

We are dealing with treachery and threats, which accompanied the establishment of Israel.

We have to be there to get the evidence like what happened in Aleppo when we had evidence. And because the United States didn't send the team, we sent the evidence to the Russians.

Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East.

We are the fault line; if you don't deal with this fault line, you're going to have an earthquake, that's what we always said.

The majority of fighters now are Al-Qaeda. If you want to support them, you are supporting Al-Qaeda, you are creating havoc in the region, and if this region is not stable, the whole world cannot be stable.

From Russia for example, we have political support, which is different from the cooperation. We have cooperation for 60 years now, but now we have political support.

[ Jihadists] are going to be against you sooner or later.

Many Syrians understand that the only way to protect your country is to live with each other with integration, not only in coexistence, which is actually more precise to call cohabitation, when people interact and integrate with each other on daily basis in every detail. So, I think in this regard I am more assured that Syria will be more unified. So, the only problem now that we face is not the partition, but terrorism.

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.

Israel has WMD, and it has to sign [chemical warfare agreement], and Israel is occupying our land, so that's we talked about the Middle East, not Syria, not Israel ; it should be comprehensive.

The Russians always base their policies on values, and these values are the sovereignty of other countries, the international law, respecting other people, other cultures, so they don't interfere in whatever is related to the future of Syria or the Syrian people.

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

It is not my democracy as a person; it is our democracy as a society.

The first thing Syrian refugees want is to be able to live within Syria. That means help, humanitarian help, the way we understand it, food, medical care, any other, let's say, basics for the daily life.

Armies are not only for offensives.

People do not only live on interests; they also live on beliefs, especially in very ideological areas. Unless you understand the ideological aspect of the region, you cannot understand what is happening.

Many people do not understand the difference between peace and a peace treaty. If you want to have real peace with normal relations between people, you need to have comprehensive peace.

When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war, so, we don't have to discuss what the image in the west before discussing the image in Syria. That's the question.

Some of these agendas wanted me to quit, very simply, so they said "we have all the guarantees if you want to leave, and all the money and everything you want." Of course, you just ignore that.

None of us and none of the Arabs trust Israel.

They want to criticize you, let them criticize and do not worry. Just be transparent with your people and tell them this is the reality.

[Enemies of Syria] are the enemies of the people and the enemies of God. And the enemies of God will go to hell.

Look at the results of regime change in Iraq. You can't possibly claim that it was successful.

For the West, they wanted to undermine the Syrian positions. For the petrodollar countries like Saudi Arabia, they're thinking undermining Syria will undermine Iran on sectarian basis.

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.

Any strike will be as direct support to Al-Qaeda offshoot that's called Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. You're right about this. It's going to be direct support.

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.

Russia is very important, Iran is very important, Hezbollah is very important. All of them are important. Each one made important achievements against the terrorists in Syria, so it's difficult to say who is more important than the other.

This is reality. If [the American officials] want to believe, that's good, that will help them understand the region and be more successful in their policies.

Opposition is different from terrorism. Opposition is a political movement.

I always say the Syrian problem as isolated case, as Syrian case, is not very complicated. What makes it complicated is the interference from the outside, especially the Western interference because it's against the will of the Syrian government, while the intervention of the Russians, Iranians, and Hezbollah is because of the invitation of the Syrian government.

If you want to kill the Syrian people, who's going to support us as a government, as officials? No one.

In the United States, they always talk about subtitles, about chapters in a book without taking the main title of the book. They talk about a subtitle in a chapter and if you ask them about the headline, the main title, they say they do not know.

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

You cannot talk about winning the war as long as there's killing and destruction on daily basis.

We have hopes that we can see rational American presidents; fair, obey the international law, deal with other countries according to mutual respect, parity, etc., but we all know that this is only wishful thinking and fantasy.

You in Lebanon, your power is no match to Israel. Israel, militarily, is more powerful than you and maybe it is more powerful than all the Arab countries, or most of them.

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.

It's not about me, again, this fight is not my fight, it's not the fight of the government ; it's the fight of the country, of the Syrian people.

You want me to believe American evidence and don't want me to believe the indications that we have. We live here, this is our reality.

There is no such things as "Islamic terrorism," because terrorism differs from Islam. There's just terrorism, not Islamic terrorism. But the term "Islamic terrorism" has become widespread.

There is no good war.

The place where the interests of all parties come together is the international community, along with its resolutions.

You cannot be desperate when the army is making advances. That should have happened - if we take into consideration that this presumption is correct and this is reality - you use it when you're in a desperate situation.

I said we don't pin a lot of hopes of changing administrations [in U.S.] because that context has been going on for more than fifty years now, and that's expected. If they want to continue in the same position of the United States creating problems around the world, that's what they have to do: only interfering in the matters of other nations.