Failure awaits any US attack on Syria: President Assad

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned that ‘failure awaits the United States’ if it launches a war on his country.

“Failure awaits the United States as in all previous wars it has unleashed, starting with Vietnam and up to the present day,” Assad said in an interview published on the Russian newspaper Izvestia on Monday.

He was reacting to the recent war rhetoric by US officials about a possible attack on Syria over the government’s alleged use of chemical weapons in the country.

Assad rejected as politically motivated the Western allegations about the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army.

“The comments [accusing the government of using chemical weapons] made by politicians in the West and other countries are an insult to common sense… It is nonsense,” Assad stated.

“Would any state use chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction in a place where its own forces are concentrated? That would go against elementary logic.”

The Syrian president also said his country is dealing with both individual terrorist groups and entire terrorist armies that are similar in terms of ideology and are backed by the same sponsors.

Assad said Saudi Arabia is both the ideological and financial sponsor of terrorists, propagating Wahhabi ideology and supplying money to insurgents.

The Syrian president added that there is no army in the world that can be fully operational throughout a country, and this is what terrorists take advantage of.

However, he underlined that the Syrian army can destroy the militancy in the country, not immediately, but eventually.

President Assad noted that tens of thousands of foreign terrorists are passing into Syria every month. He added that the Israeli regime is involved in fighting against the Syrian government and as evidence noted that Israel’s treating of “dozens of terrorists in its hospitals.”

Assad said that Western leaders would not succeed in turning Syria into a puppet of the West.

“If someone dreams of turning Syria into a puppet of the West – they won’t succeed.”

The US Department of Defense has said that Washington is ready for military action if US President Barack Obama gives the go ahead.

On Saturday, Obama held high-level talks with his security aides over a range of potential options. France and Israel have already called for military action.

On August 21, the so-called opposition Syrian National Coalition claimed that 1,300 people were killed in a government chemical attack on militant strongholds in Damascus suburbs of Ain Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar.

The Syrian government, however, has vehemently rejected the allegation, saying foreign-backed militants had carried out the attack with the aim of framing the government.

On August 24, Syrian forces found chemical agents in tunnels dug by the militants in Jobar.