I think that if you believe in regime change, you're mistaken. In 2013, we put 600 tons of weapons - us, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar - into the war against [Bashar] Assad. By pushing Assad back, we did create a safe space.
I think that by arming the allies of ISIS, the Islamic rebels against [Bashar] Assad, that we created a safe space or made that space bigger for ISIS to grow.
I think those who have wanted regime [of Bashar Assad] change have made a mistake.
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs to the small Alawite sect and is therefore considered a heretic by many Sunnis; al-Assad runs a secular regime, and therefore he is considered by Sunni militants to be an apostate, and he is inflicting a total war on his Sunni population.
A majority of the Syrian people believe in the regime and support Bashar al-Assad.
A large part of the left is pro-Assad. In those circles, you can't criticize Assad, but you know he's a monstrous war criminal. And anyone who criticizes Assad is joining the US imperialists. That's just ludicrous.
The other thing I said is the great irony is you will be back fighting against your own weapons. Had [Bashar] Assad been bombed when he used chemical weapons two years ago, ISIS would be in charge of all of Syria now.
I think the Bashar Assad regime is on a roll. I think it's got the backing of Russia and Iran and Hezbollah. And it's hard to see who is going to stand in their way in this steady fight against the insurgents.
Our intervention to destabilize the Assad regime has really made the chaos worse in Syria. And if you were to get rid of Assad today, I would actually worry about the 2 million Christians that are protected by Assad.
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 see a bit of a contradiction between the fight against the Islamic State and the desire to remove the Assad regime. And even if you work with Russia, I'm just not sold that working with Russia is an effective way to hasten the end of the Assad regime or to enact any type of punitive measures.
[Bashar] Assad is one of the main reasons why ISIS even exists to begin with. Assad is a puppet of Iran.
I think the President Donald Trump was quite clear in his statement that he made to the American people that Syria's continued violations of U.N. resolutions and previous agreements that Syria had entered into regarding the Chemical Weapons Accord would no longer be tolerated. I think we have stood by and watched multiple weapon - chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian regime under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad.
Back in August 2013, when Obama entertained the White House press corps in the Rose Garden to explain that he wasn't quite as eager to upbraid Bashar Assad as he might have inadvertently led them earlier to believe, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees counted about two million Syrians in its refugee statistics.
The question's whether or not there's an American interest in the Civil War [in Syria]. The question is whether or not a military strike on [Bashar] Assad will cause him to be encouraged to use more weapons or discouraged. It's easy enough to say - and the president [Barack Obama] says though this will teach him a lesson - but his military strike is intended not to target him individually, not to bring about regime change.
I don't believe that in a couple of months Erdogan and the United States regime, and the Western regimes in general, and of course Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are going to stop the support of the terrorists.
What is true is [Bashar] Assad got rid of his chemical weapons.