Syria\u2019s President Bashar al-Assad denied Moscow is running the show in his war-torn country, saying in an interview released Sunday his government operates independently of its Russian and Iranian allies.<\/p>\n
In a wide-ranging interview in Damascus with the Mail on Sunday, Assad slammed the United States and British military actions in Syria as \u201ccolonial\u201d while praising supporter Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had good relations with Russia for more than six decades now, nearly seven decades. They never, during our relation, try to dictate, even if there are differences,\u201d he told the British newspaper.<\/p>\n
Assad admitted his government has disagreed with Russia and Iran throughout the country\u2019s seven-year conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s very natural, but at the end the only decision about what\u2019s going on in Syria and what\u2019s going to happen, it\u2019s a Syrian decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Moscow intervened militarily in Syria\u2019s conflict in 2015, when Assad\u2019s forces were struggling to hold territory against rebel fighters.<\/p>\n
Russian air strikes and military advisors have since helped regime troops seize back more than half the country.<\/p>\n
Tehran, too, has sent military advisors to Syria, but Assad has denied that Iranian troops are on the ground. Iran\u2019s regional foe, Israel, has repeatedly warned it will not accept an entrenched Iranian presence in Syria.<\/p>\n
It is suspected of carrying out numerous raids on Syrian government positions over the years, and last month announced unprecedented strikes on what it said were Tehran-operated bases in Syria.<\/p>\n
In his interview, Assad denied Moscow had ever had prior knowledge of such strikes, despite close cooperation between Israel and Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, that\u2019s not true,\u201d he said. \u201cRussia never coordinated with anyone against Syria, either politically or militarily, and that\u2019s (a) contradiction,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow could they help the Syrian army advancing and at the same time work with our enemies in order to destroy our army?\u201d Syria\u2019s war has also drawn in many Western powers, who first backed rebel groups against Assad then shifted their focus to defeating the Islamic State jihadist group as part of a US-led coalition.<\/p>\n
Assad lambasted the American and British interventions, saying they were \u201cbreaching the sovereignty of Syria\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Syria\u2019s President Bashar al-Assad denied Moscow is running the show in his war-torn country, saying in an interview released Sunday his government operates independently of its Russian and Iranian allies. In a wide-ranging interview in Damascus with the Mail on Sunday, Assad slammed the United States and British military actions in Syria as \u201ccolonial\u201d while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33768,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766\/revisions\/33768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}