Syrian President Bashar Assad said in a Thursday interview that the Obama administration is “not serious” about getting rid of the Islamic State, and said U.S. airstrikes in Syria are illegal because the U.S. has not been invited.
In a rare interview with NBC, Assad said it’s the Russian forces that are being most effective against the Islamic State, while U.S. attacks are not effective.
“Since the Russian intervention, the terrorism has been, let’s say, regressing, while before that, and during the American illegal intervention with their lies, ISIS was expanding and the terrorism was expanding and taking over new areas in Syria,” Assad said.
“They’re not serious. So I cannot say I welcome the unseriousness and to be in Syria illegally,” he added.
When pressed to explain how the U.S. can be unserious given the number of airstrikes it has launched, Assad dismissed that and said, “It’s not how many strikes,” but rather what is being achieved.
Assad also said the failure of the U.S. to stop the rise of the Islamic State is another sign of how unserious the U.S. is. “ISIS has been set up in … Iraq in 2006, while the United States was in Iraq, not Syria,” he said. “So it was growing under the supervision of the American authority in Iraq, and they didn’t do anything to fight ISIS that time.”
They don’t fight it now, it’s been expanding under the supervision of the American airplanes,” he added. “And they could have seen ISIS using the oilfields and. .. exporting oil to Turkey, and they didn’t try to attack any convoy of ISIS.
“How could they be against ISIS?” he asked.
Assad stressed that Russia has been invited to fight the Islamic State in Syria, while the U.S. has not, making it an “illegal” U.S. military action.
“They’re invited legally and formally by the Syrian government,” he said of Russia. “It’s the right of any government to invite any other country to help in any issue.
“So they are legal in Syria, while the Americans are not legal,” he added.
Assad said the U.S. routinely lies about its intentions, regardless of who is in charge. He said for that reason, he’s “not really” paying attention to Donald Trump or the U.S. presidential campaign.
