Assad Quotes

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

In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria's crisis once and for all.

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

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.

I think Hillary Clinton is right. I think it isn't enough to leave [Bashir] Assad in place, because as long as he is there, there is going to be a recruiting magnet for ISIS.

If we topple [Bashar] Assad, the result will be ISIS will take over Syria, and it will worsen U.S. national security interests.

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

There are still people - the majority on the stage, they want to topple [Bashar] Assad. And then there will be chaos, and I think ISIS will then be in charge of Syria.

If we have the kinds of confirmation that we need, we will once again work with the international community and the organization charged with monitoring compliance by the Syrian government, and we will reach out to patrons of Assad like Russia to put a stop to it.

In the eyes of the Iranians, they don't respect or fear Barack Obama. He drew a line against Assad when he used chemical weapons and did nothing about it. And our friends, the Arabs and the Israelis, don't trust President Obama.

Unless there is meaningful change in Syria and an end to the crackdown, President Assad and those around him will find themselves isolated internationally and discredited within Syria.

It is clear that the American people are weary of war. However, Assad gassing his own people is an issue of our national security, regional stability and global security.

If you can resolve this transition of [Bashar] Assad, that is absolutely possible, but you have to have a clarity for everybody about the way forward.

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.

We could have made peace with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad a long time ago. It didn't happen, because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't want to give up the Golan (Heights).

[Vladimir] Putin wants to keep [Bashar] Assad in power and expand his own military base in Syria, whatever the cost. I even believe he has an interest in more and more people fleeing the country. The flow of refugees improves his negotiating position toward the West, including the German chancellor.

I invite President Assad to come to Jerusalem and to speak with me, with our parliament, with whomever he wants to speak in Israel and in the territories among the Palestinians.

I don't think that the United States has the bulk of the responsibility. I really put that on Bashar Assad and on the Iraqis and on the region itself.

Part of the problem that we have currently in the Middle East is that[Bashar] Assad has hung on to power with the very strong support of Russia and Iran and with the proxy of Hezbollah being there basically fighting his battles.

This comes from a group of people who`ve been wrong about every foreign policy issue over the last two decades. They supported Hillary Clinton`s war in Libya. They supported President [Barack] Obama`s bombing of Assad.

I think we are making an assumption that that is the outcome of the negotiations. I think President Assad will be prepared to accept whatever the outcome of the intra-Syrian dialogue and the decision of the Syrian people is. But people are trying to decide and determine the outcome of the negotiation before even we agree to start the negotiations.

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

What holds an Arab leader in power is a mixture of violence and prestige. Both President Assad and King Hussein were felt to have defended Arab interests against the world. That, in the end, is more important than what they wear on their head.

The Russians appear to be - appear to be in conjunction with the Turks, as well as the Iranians, appear to be at a point where they are realizing for their interests as well, Assad being in power indefinitely is not in their interests.

Assad is not going away, but we're not going to stop beating up on him. We're not going to stop saying that the way he treats the people in Syria is wrong, that he has actually killed his own people and America will never stand for that.

Assad is always a priority. That is not an issue. He is a war crime. He has done terrible things to his own people. He has used chemical weapons on his own people. He continues to be a hindrance to peace in Syria. And that is something the Trump administration strongly believes.

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

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.

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

I believe that Assad must go. I believe he will go. But I believe - we want to make sure that America has the relationships of friendship with the people that take his place, steps that in the years to come we see Syria as a friend, and Syria as a responsible party in the Middle East.

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

I am confident that Assad's days are numbered. But what we can't do is to simply suggest that, as Governor Romney at times has suggested, that giving heavy weapons, for example, to the Syrian opposition is a simple proposition that would lead us to be safer over the long term.

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

If [Bashar] Assad himself could save this whole process by saying, "I will engage in a managed transition where we all work together to stabilize the government, save the institutions of government, and turn on ISIL and preserve Syria." That could happen. It all depends on one man, and Russia and Iran should not be so stubborn here that they tie this whole thing up simply because of one person.

I think we bring together that broad coalition including Russia to help us destroy ISIS and work on a timetable to get rid of Assad, hopefully through Democratic elections. First priority, destroy ISIS.

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

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.

While all Alawites fear vengeance against their entire community should Assad fall, there are varying degrees of loyalty to the Assads.

[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.

Iran's arms exports to the murderous Assad regime in Syria are of particular concern. As the Panel of Experts has concluded, Syria is now the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers.

The principal sponsors of the terrorists are not religious fanatics. "Palestine's Yasser Arafat, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and Syria's Assad family have made themselves the icons of Islamism despite the fact that they are well-known atheists who live un-Muslim lives and have persecuted unto death the Muslim movements in their countries."

I'm not a journalist. So I didn't down and let Assad charm me. I didn't walk away and say "my god he's got an Apple computer and he really likes Beyonce so he must be a liberal."

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.

IS [Islamic State] has played a major role in helping Bashar al-Assad to reposition Syria on the international scene. Now, it is almost impossible to come up with a solution that would exclude him. The political game appears to be very cynical indeed.

I still think a reasonable question is, would we be better off with [Muamar] Gadhafi and Bashar al-Assad still in there and Mubarak still there and Saddam [Hussein] there than the crap we have got looking at us now?

The Western alliance should have supported the Sunni opposition against the Assad regime from the beginning. As far as Iraq is concerned, if it had stayed stable the way it was in 2008, IS would not have been able to expand in Iraq the way they did. The mistake was that Barack Obama withdrew the armed forces from Iraq too fast.

There seems to be a passive alliance between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and that's unprecedented in its form and dangerous in its content, because Russia is our most dangerous geopolitical opponent because of the desires that they have in the Middle East and because of their desire to break up Europe. And in the United States, we spent a lot of blood and a lot of treasure trying to keep Europe intact and democratic, and trying to keep the Middle East from being only influenced by people who are massive fans of [Syrian President] Assad and massive fans of the Iranians.

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.

We know that russians are deeply engaged in supporting Assad because they want to have a place in the Middle East. They have a naval base, they have an air base in Syria.

Luckily for [Barack] Obama, the Russians came along and rescued him with this proposal [to confiscate Assad's chemical weapons] which he quickly accepted - it was a way out of the embarrassment of facing likely defeat. They still have the option of bombing if they want to. And incidentally, to add one comment about this, you'll notice that this would be a very good moment to institute a call for imposing the Chemical Weapons Convention on the Middle East.