Syrian President Bashar Assad believes that the civil war in his country is close to its conclusion, which would be his retaking of the vast parts of his country which are under the control of many different players. In an interview with the Russian state news agency RT, Assad asserted that the closer the conflict comes to an end, “the more desperate his opponents’ measures become.” In Assad’s mind, the West’s accusations of his army’s chemical attack on his own citizens in Douma proves how desperate his opponents are.
“They told a story, they told a lie, and the public opinion around the world and in the West didn’t buy their story, but they couldn’t withdraw. So, they had to do something, even on a smaller scale,” Assad said, referring to the joint airstrikes against purported Syrian chemical weapons facilities, carried out on April 14 by the US, the UK, and France.”
As to the continuous Israeli attacks on Iran’s expedition force in Syrian military bases, Assad insisted: “The most important fact regarding this issue is that we do not have Iranian forces. We did not have any Iranian forces at any time. We can not conceal this. We are not ashamed to say that we have such a force.”
“We have Iranian officers who are helping the Syrian army,” Assad explained, insisting all of the “martyrs” in Israel’s attacks have been Syrian, “and there was not one Iranian” among them.
His version contradicts Iran’s own announcements of the fact that there have been plenty of Iranian martyrs in the recent Israeli airstrikes.
Is President Assad delusional? Probably – you can’t be reduced to the post of Mayor of Damascus and still call yourself President of Syria without a hefty dose of delusional thinking. In another example of the quality of his grasp on reality, Assad represented the resounding defeat of a Syrian, Iranian and Russian mercenary forces by some 30 US Delta force fighters in February this way:
“We were close to have direct conflict between the Russian forces and the American forces, and fortunately, it has been avoided, not by the wisdom of the American leadership, but by the wisdom of the Russian leadership.”
Assad added: “We need the Russian support, but we need at the same time to avoid the American foolishness in order to be able to stabilize our country.”
At this point, the American “foolishness” is represented by an iron wall preventing Assad and his supporters from breaking east into Syrian Kurdistan to grab the rich oil deposits the regime is being denied.
As to his efforts to rid himself of the pesky Syrian rebel forces, Assad proves how aware he actually is of his losses: “Factions like Al-Qaeda, like ISIS, like Al-Nusra, and the like-minded groups, they’re not ready for any dialogue, they don’t have any political plan; they only have this dark ideological plan, which is to be like any Al-Qaeda-controlled area anywhere in this world. So, the only option to deal with those factions is force,” Assad told RT.
And so the seven-year war will likely continue, with daily killings continuing to be the status quo in Syria. “The more escalation we have, the more determined we’ll be to solve the problem, because you don’t have any other choice; either you have a country or you don’t have a country,” Assad told RT.
He doesn’t.