MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Assad said that Daesh used to smuggle oil in Iraq under US' satellites and drones, however, the US-led coalition failed to do anything to stop it.
"In the past if I said anything, people would say the Syrian president is disconnected from reality. Now it’s different. The West is becoming much weaker. They don’t have a leg to stand on explaining to people what’s going on … ISIS [Daesh] was smuggling oil and using Iraqi oilfields under American satellites and drones to make money, and the West was not saying anything. Whereas here the Russians interfered and ISIS started to shrink in every sense of the word," Assad told The Sunday Times in an interview issued on Sunday.
"We call it a world war, but it’s a world war against Syria, tens of countries against us, sending those terrorists money and logistics, whereas our army is only Syrian, so we struggled … At the end we were fighting an unlimited reserve of terrorists coming to Syria and we struggled, so Russian firepower and Iranian support has compensated," he said.
The president noted that Western countries were waging an information campaign against him.
"Demonisation has reached its peak. This is a dictator, this is killing his people, dropping barrel bombs … there’s nothing more they can say about me," Assad said.
He also denied the accusations of the alleged use of chemical weapons.
"We never used it. Chemical weapons is mass destruction and would have killed thousands in a few minutes or an hour. We never had such an incident," the Syrian president said.
