A Quote by Crispin Blunt

The creeping optimism that there might be a route to peace in Syria remains constrained by the elephant in the room - Bashar al-Assad. — © Crispin Blunt
The creeping optimism that there might be a route to peace in Syria remains constrained by the elephant in the room - Bashar al-Assad.
In Syria, if [Bashar al-] Assad had just been a statesman and handed over the reigns in time, Syria would not be heading down the nightmare that it is today.
Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President.
You cannot bring peace in Syria as long as [Bashar] Assad is, in fact, there.
Bashar al-Assad and those who still stand by him are now responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 in Syria.
One of the most missed components of the entire insurgency in Iraq was that Syria and Bashar al-Assad facilitated Al Qaeda's operations in Iraq. They actually headquartered the Iraq Ba'ath Party and all of their escaped generals in Damascus.
People talk about [Bashar] Assad running Syria. He doesn't control his own country. He's down to about 20, 25 percent of the country. What is this fiction that he is somehow the only person who can save Syria? There's - with Assad there, there is no Syria. So that's what the Iranians and the Russians need to really begin to focus in on.
Russia is emerging as an essential diplomatic and security partner for the U.S. in Syria, despite the Obama administration's opposition to Moscow's support for President Bashar al-Assad.
Bashar al-Assad needs to be replaced, but he can't be replaced with another Bashar al-Assad.
On Syria, it's clear that the indiscriminate attacks on civilians by the [Bashar] Assad regime and Russia will only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe and that a negotiated end to the conflict is the only way to achieve lasting peace in Syria.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad will inevitably go down. And its collapse will be loud not only in Syria but across the Arab world.
Hillary Clinton has gotten every foreign policy challenge wrong. Hitting the reset button with Vladimir Putin - recall that she called Bashar Al-Assad a positive reformer and then she opened an embassy and then later she said, over, and over, and over again, "Bashar Al-Assad must go." Although she wasn't prepared to do anything about it.
I don't think he fully analyzes the situation. If you destabilize [Bashar] Assad and punish Assad, you do embolden terrorists. You embolden al-Qaida because al-Qaida is on the other side of this war. So, one side wins if you destabilize the other side. So, he will be emboldening al-Qaida and the Islamic rebels. And I'm not so sure they're better than Assad.
I don't regret at all saying that if I saw Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons on his people that that would change my assessments in terms of what we were or were not willing to do in Syria.
I think most of the Washington foreign policy establishment exists in a fantasy world when it comes to Syria. They fundamentally don't understand that Russia and Iran, from the beginning, had much more at stake in Syria than the United States did. Russia and Iran were going to do everything possible in order to keep Bashar al-Assad in power.
I mean, all of these things that [Bashar Assad] has done, there's no way even if President Obama wanted to just play along that you could actually achieve peace, because there are 65 million Sunni in between Baghdad and the border of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, who will never, ever again accept Assad as a member - as a legitimate leader.
We have always said there are two ways to resolve Syria, and both will end up with the same result: a Syria without Bashar Assad.
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