Top 252 Assad Quotes & Sayings

[Bashar] Assad himself has said on several occasions recently that if the people of Syria don't believe I should be there in the future, then I would step - I would leave. He has said it. He has, on occasion, hinted that he wants a political settlement of one kind or another. I think it's up to his supporters, his strongest supporters, to make it clear to him that if you're going to save Syria, Assad has made a set of choices - barrel bombing children, gassing his people, torturing his people, engaging in starvation as a tactic of war.

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.

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'll tell you whose view on [Bashar] Assad is the same as mine. It's Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu has said Israel doesn't have a dog in that fight because Assad is a puppet of Iran, a Shia radical Islamic terrorist, but at the same time, Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't want to see Syria governed by ISIS.

There is no doubt Assad deserves every missile we fire at him, but there's one big problem with air strikes - there is absolutely no proof it has any deterrent effect on Assad. To the contrary, history tells us these strikes will most likely quicken the pace of his assault on his own people.

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.

Bashar al-Assad needs to be replaced, but he can't be replaced with another Bashar al-Assad.

Assad has to go. I mean, the way that ISIS can recruit, and the rebels that are in the north, and all the chaos that's happening through a lot of Syria circles around a lot of people that do not like Assad.

Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President.

Russia and Iran are not going to allow the Assad regime to fall.

Kurds are going to have to strike a bargain with Bashar Assad that will keep them in the Syrian state and under some kind of Syrian authority, so that they can have the protection of international legitimacy and the Syrian army against the Turks. How they can bargain with Assad is unclear. What kind of negotiations they can come to, unclear. We will see whether they get something like the Kurds in Iraq, which is a large measure of autonomy, or something less than that. That will be one of the big negotiations to come out of this process.

Just because Iran and Syria may recognize Assad's weaknesses doesn't necessarily mean that Assad recognizes his weaknesses.

Da'esh and Assad are not separate problems.

Russia hasn't paid any attention to ISIS. They're interested in keeping Assad in power.

Seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for America.

I don't like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS. And Iran is killing ISIS. And those three have now lined up because of our weak foreign policy.

Assad must go. He's lost the legitimacy to govern.

Russia and Iran back Assad, but are they fighting Daesh? The answer is 'no.'

It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad's soldiers.

What the United States needs to do at this point is reaffirm our commitment that Assad must go and that Iran and Russia cannot be granted a sphere of influence in Syria, and that we will not sit down at the negotiating table to help broker Assad's victory in this fight.

We have to do one thing at a time. We can't be fighting ISIS and fighting [Bashar]Assad. Assad is fighting ISIS. He is fighting ISIS. Russia is fighting now ISIS. And Iran is fighting ISIS.

A majority of the Syrian people believe in the regime and support Bashar al-Assad.

There's no way to resolve Syria without Iran being involved, given its financing of Assad and the fact that Hezbollah is probably the most effective fighting force that Assad can count on.

Clinton impressed Assad: a young man who appeared to want to be neutral in the Arab-Israeli dispute - an illusion of course, but that's what Assad thought.

To simply demand that Assad go, and create a vacuum, could make the circumstances worse. To 'protect' Assad and his brutality is unconscionable. So you have to have a transition period here.

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.

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.

Here's the problem - under both Obama and Trump, American military forces and assistance have provided just enough support to anti-Assad forces to keep the resistance going, but never enough help to actually dislodge Assad from power.

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and Assad are two sides of the same terror coin. Letting Assad continue to wield lethal power means that Tehran's terror network - from Hezbollah to the Houthis - will persist in threatening the West.

It's - getting Assad out is not the only priority. And so what we're trying to do is obviously defeat ISIS.

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.

I don't like [Bashir] Assad at all. But Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS.

The Assad regime is quite reliant on oil exports.

I would only go to Syria to destroy ISIS. I would not use U.S. troops to depose Assad. But I would support the rebels there. It's okay to support those people who share your view. But for the United States to be embroiled in a civil war in Syria against [Bashr] Assad I think is a big mistake.

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.

There is no one else at all who is fighting ISIS on the ground, except for President al-Assad's army.

Mr. Assad is not going to be able to feel like there is a moderate opposition that actually threatens him. Currently, the Assad government looks out at the landscape, sees the rise of ISIS, sees that much of the rebel force has become largely Islamist, and then turns to the West and says, well, you know, they look toward the West and say, well, look, what you have is a terrorist group that's fighting against us. So in this context, I think, to talk about moderate opposition being created to put pressure on Damascus is rather illusionary.

Every chance at destabilizing [Bashar] Assad... the bombing campaign causes a flood of refugees into Jordan, there's already half a million in Jordan. I think a bombing campaign - I think it's hard to argue that a U.S. bombing campaign is going to cause less refugees. And I think it causes more refugees and more of a humanitarian disaster. I think it causes, or allows, the risk of Israel being attacked with a gas attack to go up, if we attack Assad. So there's all kinds of bad things.

Assad's brutality has nurtured extremism and been its main recruiting sergeant.

Assad is not the greatest ally to have.

We need to focus on destroying ISIL, but we shouldn't be the ones declaring that [Bashir] Assad must go.

I think those who have wanted regime [of Bashar Assad] change have made a mistake.

The word 'democracy' and the name of Assad do not blend very well in much of Syria.

Assad is a bad guy, but you may very well end up with worse than Assad.

[Bashar] Assad is one of the main reasons why ISIS even exists to begin with. Assad is a puppet of Iran.

I don't understand this thing about [Bashar] Assad. He has to go. Assad is aligned with Iran and Russia. The one thing we want to prevent is we want to prevent Iran being able to extend a Shia crescent all across the Middle East. Assad has got to go.

We have to get rid of ISIS first. After we get rid of ISIS, we'll start thinking about it. But we can't be fighting [Bashar] Assad. And when you're fighting Assad, you are fighting Russia, you're fighting - you're fighting a lot of different groups.

Senator Kerry was fooled by Bashar al-Assad.

Does anyone believe that Kofi Annan scares Bashar Assad?

Hillary Clinton called President Assad a "reformer". She called Assad a "different kind of leader". There's now 400,000 now dead... think about that.

You cannot bring peace in Syria as long as [Bashar] Assad is, in fact, there.

We don't see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there.

We need to learn from history. These same leaders - [Barack] Obama, [Hillary] Clinton, and far too many Republicans - want to topple [Bashar] Assad. Assad is a bad man. Gadhafi was a bad man. Mubarak had a terrible human rights record. But they were assisting us - at least [Muammar] Gadhafi and [Hosni] Mubarak - in fighting radical Islamic terrorists.

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.

Israel lost its war. Will Assad's enemies lose, too?

A lot of the issue that is happening in Syria is Assad is still there. And after years now, the administration, of saying Assad has to go, the pressure is not being applied to Russia, to Iran - the folks that are propping up Assad - and Assad himself to be able to actually be removed there and to transition to another leader.

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.

Bashar Assad clearly doesn't want to hear anything that impugns his government.

Sunni are the majority of the [Syria], 60 to 65 percent. They've been ruled by [Bashar] Assad, who represents a minority Alawite element, which is about 12, 13 percent. And because of the choices Assad made, it's very difficult to see how you resolve this without buy-in from the Sunni world.

What is true is [Bashar] Assad got rid of his chemical weapons.