“I’ve never heard of soft war.There’s no soft war. War is war. Any war is ruthless. When you fight terrorists, you fight them like any other war.”

Many people do not understand the difference between peace and a peace treaty. If you want to have real peace with normal relations between people, you need to have comprehensive peace.

We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs.

What the army is doing is cleaning those areas, and the indication that the army is strong is that it’s making advancement in that area. It never went to one area and couldn’t enter to it – that’s an indication.

Terrorists have been supported by tens of foreign countries, so Syria alone wouldn’t be able to face this kind of war without the help of its friends.

When you’re in the middle of a storm, leaving your country just because you have to leave without any reasonable reason, it means you’re quitting your country and this is treason.

Despite the ethnic diversity within each nation, the social fabric of the region by and large is one.

In Aleppo we had the missile itself, and the material, and the sample from the sand, from the soil, and samples from the blood [of chemical weapons].

You said treaties, and a Russian official said ; we have not agreement… contracts, that we have to fulfill, and those contracts are like any country ; you buy armaments, you buy anything you want.

Opposition doesn’t mean to take arms and kill people and destroy everything.

We’re not like the American administration, we’re not social media administration or government. We are a government that deals with reality. When we have evidence, we’ll announce it.

Every country has criminals who have to be fought. They can exist anywhere, including the government or the army – or outside the government and army.

I cannot afford to make mistakes.

When you talk about Al-Qaeda it doesn’t matter if he’s Syrian or American or from Europe or from Asia or Africa.

Since its very inception, Israel has been a threat.

Fighting the terrorists in Syria is not only in the interest of Syria or the Syrian people; in the interest of the Middle East, of Europe itself.

Israel has WMD, and it has to sign [chemical warfare agreement], and Israel is occupying our land, so that’s we talked about the Middle East, not Syria, not Israel ; it should be comprehensive.