“Israel does not care about the international public opinion.”

Hezbollah fighters are on the borders with Lebanon where the terrorists attacked them. On the borders with Lebanon, this is where Hezbollah retaliated, and this is where we have cooperation, and that’s good.

How can you be afraid to feel? Isn’t fear a feeling? If you’re feeling fear, you’ve felt one of the most negative emotions there is to feel.

With the time, yes we can be worried, because the secular state should reflect secular society, and this secular society, with the time, if you don’t get rid of those terrorists and these extremists and the Wahabi style, of course it will influence at least the new and the coming generations.

There’s a video on YouTube where the terrorists clearly make trials [of chemical weapons] on a rabbit and kill the rabbit and said “this is how we’re going to kill the Syrian people.”

You want me to believe American evidence and don’t want me to believe the indications that we have. We live here, this is our reality.

You cannot be desperate when the army is making advances. That should have happened – if we take into consideration that this presumption is correct and this is reality – you use it when you’re in a desperate situation.

The question is who threw chemicals on the same day on our soldiers. That’s the same question. Technically, not the soldiers. Soldiers don’t throw missiles on themselves. So, either the rebels, the terrorists, or a third party. We don’t have any clue yet.

We are worried that rebels are taking control in many countries, and look at the results now. Are you satisfied as an American ? What are the results ? Nothing. Very bad – nothing good.

Our democracy should reflect our culture and our habits and our customs and our reality at the same time.

There is no such things as “Islamic terrorism,” because terrorism differs from Islam. There’s just terrorism, not Islamic terrorism. But the term “Islamic terrorism” has become widespread.

Before the 11th of September, in my discussions with many officials of the United States, some of them are Congressmen, I used to say that “don’t deal with terrorists as playing games.” It’s a different story. You’re going to pay the price if you’re not wise in dealing with terrorists.

That’s the problem with the American position; they think that they are the police of the world.

We don’t say that we don’t have it, we’re still secular in Syria, but with the time, this secularism will be eroded.

As a state, as a government, in 2001 we proposed to the United Nations to empty or to get rid of every WMD in the Middle East, and the United States stood against that proposal. This is our conviction and policy.

This is where we can discuss the evidence [of the chemical weapons ], but he doesn’t have it. He didn’t present it because he doesn’t have it, Kerry doesn’t have it. No one in your administration has it. If they had it, they would have presented it to you as media from the first day.

[United States] are sovereign country, they are an independent country, but this is their limit; they don’t have to interfere in any other country.

Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel – these are things which should in their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible and above all let finance be primarily national.

I lived abroad most of my life in insular international communities.

Maintaining confidence in international trade will be critical to the broader economic recovery in the post-Covid world.

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s lives should not stake their own.

My persona has given me a certain notoriety, if not international celebrity.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia.

The United States has even gone so far as to veto Security Council resolutions calling on all states to observe international law. That was in the 1980s under Reagan.

It is also a course of action that strikes a blow against the regime of international order, but which offers the weak at least some protection from predatory states.