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TEHRAN, May 31 - Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad says the United States “is losing its cards” as the militant groups it supports have lost significant ground on the battlefield against the army, emphasizing that the Americans “should leave” Syrian soil.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - In an interview with Russia's RT television network on Thursday, Assad said that following the liberation of the cities of Aleppo, Dayr la-Zawr, Homs, and Damascus, the US is actually “losing its cards.”
“The main card was al-Nusra that was called ‘moderate.’ But when the scandal started leaking, that they are not moderate, they are al-Qaeda ..., they (the Americans) looked for another card. This card is the SDF now,” he said, referring to the Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-dominated alliance of militants operating near the Turkish border.
Assad further said his government has two options in dealing with the SDF issue.
“The first one: we started now opening doors for negotiations. Because the majority of them are Syrians, supposedly they like their country, they don't like to be puppets to any foreigners,” he said in English.
“If not, we’re going to resort... to liberating those areas by force,” Assad said.
“We don’t have any other option. So, this is our land, it’s our right, and it’s our duty to liberate it, and the Americans should leave, somehow they’re going to leave,” he said.
Assad further urged the US to “to learn the lesson” from Iraq, saying, “People will not accept foreigners in this region anymore.”
US could break intl. law again to attack Syria
Elsewhere, Assad was asked about the possibility of an assault by the US and its allies on Syria similar to the tripartite missile attack last month.
“Of course, it could, because when the Unites States trampled over the international law, on a daily basis sometimes in different areas for different reasons, any country in the world could have such an attack,” he said. “So, as long as you don’t have an international law that could be obeyed by the United States and its puppets in the West, there is no guarantee that it won’t happen.”
On April 14, the US, Britain and France launched a coordinated missile attack against sites and research facilities near Damascus and Homs with the purported goal of paralyzing the Syrian government’s capability to produce chemicals.
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