Assad: Syria to Keep Building Up Air Defenses After Getting Leg-Up From Russia

Syria will continue beefing up its air defenses after getting help from Russia, President Bashar Assad said in an interview with the RT news channel.

"Our air defense is much stronger than before, thanks to the Russian support, and the recent attacks by the Israelis and by the Americans and British and French proved that we are in a better situation," he said. "The only option is to improve our air defense, this is the only thing we can do, and we are doing that."

Assad accused Israel of being in contact with Syrian militants from the start of the seven-year war. He said militants appeared to have acted in the interest of Israel when they picked air defense systems as their primary target.

"The first target of the mercenaries in Syria was the air defense. Before attacking any other military base it was the air defense… This is the other proof that Israel was in direct link with those terrorists in Syria. So, they attacked those bases, and they destroyed a big part of our air defenses," he pointed out.

US Strikes on Syria

Bashar Assad said that he did not exclude another US strike anytime as long as the United States continued to violate international laws.

"Of course, it could, because when the Unites States trampled over the international law, on daily basis sometimes in different areas for different reasons, any country in the world could have such an attack," he said in response to whether an attack was likely.

"As long as you don’t have an international law that could be obeyed by the United States and its puppets in the West, there is no guarantee that it won’t happen," Assad added.

Iranian Troops in Syria

Despite Israel's claims there are no Iranian troops in Syria, but there are Iranian officers who assist as military advisers, Bashar Assad said.

"The most important fact regarding this issue, is that we do not have Iranian troops. We never had, and you cannot hide it, and we are not ashamed to say that we have, like we invited the Russians, we could have invited the Iranians," Assad stressed.

The Syrian president noted, however, that there were Iranian officers "who work with the Syrian Army as help."

"The starkest fact about their [Israel's] lies about this issue, the Iranian issue, that the recent attack a few weeks ago, they said that they attacked Iranian bases and camps, as they said, allegedly, and actually we had tens of Syrian martyrs and wounded soldiers, not a single Iranian. So, how could they say that we have it? So, it is a lie," Assad stressed.

Syrian Conflict Not Civil War

The conflict in Syria is not a civil war, since the very beginning it was a struggle against terrorists and "the West's mercenaries," Syrian President Bashar Assad said.

"The word 'civil war' has been used widely since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, even by our friends, and by our allies by mistake, without understanding the content of this meaning. Syrian 'civil war' means there are sectarian lines based on either ethnicities or sects or religions or maybe political opinion or political currents, let's say, something we do not have in Syria," Assad said.

The Syrian president noted that people of various ethnicities and religious beliefs resided in the area controlled by the government, but all of them backed Damascus.

"What we have actually from the very beginning are mercenaries, Syrians, and foreigners being paid by the West in order to topple the government … If we had civil war for seven years, we should have been divided by now. You cannot have one country, united country, united society, it is not geographically because now of the Unites States' puppets and the Turkish puppets. If there were a civil war, then you should have a divided society," Assad stressed.

"The more we get closer to the end, the more they want to make it farther … The more reconciliation you have in one area, the more killing and destruction and trying to capture more areas by the terrorists we will have. That is why within the reconciliation, when we started reconciliations in many areas, the other factions in the same area tried to destroy it, because they have the orders from the outside not to go toward any reconciliation, of course, you have the orders with the pocket of money," Assad told the RT broadcaster.

The Syrian president stressed that the farther the situation escalated, the more determined the Syrian government was "to solve the problem."

"Because you do not have any other choice – either you have a country or you do not have a country," Assad said.

Source: https://sputniknews.com/