because the President of the United States

will address the nation

this week and

as you know an important conversation is taking place

in Washington and important things are happening here in your country.

Do you expect an airstrike?

As long as the United States doesn’t obey the international law

and trample over the Charter of the United Nations we have to worry

that any administration – not only this one – would do anything.

According to the lies that we’ve been hearing for the last two weeks

from high-ranking officials in the US administration

we have to expect the worst.

Are you prepared?

We’ve been living in difficult circumstances for the last two years and a half,

and we prepare ourselves for every possibility.

But that doesn’t mean if you’re prepared things will be better;

it’s going to get worse with any foolish strike or stupid war.

What do you mean worse?

Worse because of the repercussions because nobody can tell

you the repercussions of the first strike.

We’re talking about one region, bigger regions, not only about Syria.

This interlinked region, this intermingled, interlocked,

whatever you want to call it;

if you strike somewhere, you have to expect the repercussions

somewhere else in different forms in ways you don’t expect.

Are you suggesting that if in fact there is a strike;

there will be repercussions against the United States from your friends

in other countries like Iran or Hezbollah or others?

As I said, this may take different forms: direct and indirect.

Direct when people want to retaliate, or governments.

Indirect when you’re going to have instability and the spread

of terrorism all over the region that will influence the west directly.

Have you had conversations with Russia, with Iran or with Hezbollah about how to retaliate?

We don’t discuss this issue as a government, but we discuss the repercussions,

which is more important because sometimes repercussions

could be more destroying than the strike itself.

Any American strike will not destroy as much as the terrorists have already destroyed in Syria;

sometimes the repercussions could be many doubles the strike itself.

But some have suggested that it might tip the balance in the favor

of the rebels and lead to the overthrow of your government.

Exactly. Any strike will be as direct support to Al-Qaeda

offshoot that’s called Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

You’re right about this. It’s going to be direct support.

This is about chemical warfare. Let’s talk about that.

Do you approve of the use of chemical warfare?

What do you mean?

The use of deadly chemicals.

Do you think that it is an appropriate tool of war, to use chemicals?

We are against any WMD, any weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical or nuclear.

So you’re against the use of chemical warfare?

Yes, not only me. As a state, as a government, in 2001 we proposed to the United Nations

to empty or to get rid of every WMD in the Middle East,

and the United States stood against that proposal.

This is our conviction and policy.

But you’re not a signatory to the chemical warfare agreement.

Not yet.

Why not?

Because Israel has WMD, and it has to sign, and Israel is occupying our land,

so that’s we talked about the Middle East, not Syria,

not Israel; it should be comprehensive.

Do you consider chemical warfare equivalent to nuclear warfare?

I don’t know. We haven’t tried either.

But you know, you’re a head of state, and you understand

the consequences of weapons that don’t discriminate.

Technically, they’re not the same. But morally, it’s the same.

Morally, they are the same.

They are the same, but at the end, killing is killing.

Massacring is massacring.

Sometimes you may kill tens of thousands or

hundreds of thousands with very primitive armaments.

Then why do you have such a stockpile of chemical weapons?

We don’t discuss this issue in public because

we never said that we have it,

and we never said that we don’t have it.

It’s a Syrian issue; it’s a military issue

we never discuss in public with anyone.

This is from the New York Times this morning:

Syria’s leaders amassed

one of the world’s largest stockpiles

of chemical weapons with help from the Soviet Union

and Iran as well as Western European suppliers,

and even a handful of American companies.

According to American diplomatic cables and declassified

intelligence records, you have amassed one

of the largest supplies of chemical weapons in the world.

To have or not to have is a possibility,

but to depend on what media says is nonsense,

or to depend on some of the reports of the intelligence

is nonsense and that was proven when they

invaded Iraq ten years ago and they said “Iraq has stockpiles of WMD”

and it was proven after the invasion that this was false;

it was fraud.

So, we can’t depend on what one magazine wrote.

But at the end, I said it’s something

not to be discussed with anyone.

You accept that the world believes you do

have a stockpile of chemical weapons?

Who?

The world.

The United States and other powers who also said that you have chemical weapons.

It isn’t about what they believe in,

it’s about the reality that we have,

and this reality, we own it, we don’t have to discuss it.

Speaking of reality, what was the reality on August 21st?

What happened in your judgment?

We’re not in the area where the alleged chemical attack happened.

I said alleged. We’re not sure that anything happened.

Even at this date, you’re not sure that chemical weapons

even though you have seen the video tape,

even though you’ve seen the bodies,

even though your own officials have been there.

I haven’t finished.

Our soldiers in another area were attacked chemically.

Our soldiers – they went to the hospital

as casualties because of chemical weapons,

but in the area where they said

the government used chemical weapons,

we only had video and we only have pictures and allegations.

We’re not there; our forces, our police,

our institutions don’t exist there.

How can you talk about what happened

if you don’t have evidence?

We’re not like the American administration,

we’re not social media administration or government.

We are a government that deals with reality.

When we have evidence, we’ll announce it.

Well, as you know, Secretary Kerry has said

there is evidence and that they saw rockets

that fired from a region controlled by

your forces into a region controlled by the rebels.

They have evidence from satellite photographs of that.

They have evidence of a message

that was intercepted about chemical weapons,

and soon thereafter there were other intercepted messages,

so Secretary Kerry has presented what he views as conclusive evidence.

No, he presented his confidence

and his convictions.

It’s not about confidence, it’s about evidence.

The Russians have completely opposite evidence

that the missiles were thrown from an area where the rebels control.

This reminds me – what Kerry said -

about the big lie that Collin Powell said

in front of the world on satellites about the WMD in Iraq

before going to war.

He said “this is our evidence.”

Actually, he gave false evidence.

In this case, Kerry didn’t even present any evidence.

He talked “we have evidence”

and he didn’t present anything.

Not yet, nothing so far;

not a single shred of evidence.

Do you have some remorse for those bodies,

those people, it is said to be up to at least

a thousand or perhaps 1400,

who were in Eastern Ghouta, who died?

We feel pain for every Syrian victim.

What about the victims of this assault from chemical warfare?

Dead is dead, killing is killing, crime is crime.

When you feel pain, you feel pain about their family,

about the loss that you have in your country,

whether one person was killed or a hundred or a thousand.

It’s a loss, it’s a crime, it’s a moral issue.

We have family that we sit with,

family that loved their dear ones.

It’s not about how they are killed,

it’s about that they are dead now; this is the bad thing.

But has there been any remorse or sadness

on behalf of the Syrian people for what happened?

I think sadness prevails in Syria now.

We don’t feel anything else but sadness

because we have this killing every day,

whether with chemical or any other kind.

It’s not about how. We feel with it every day.

But this was indiscriminate, and children were killed,

and people who said goodbye to their children

in the morning didn’t see them and will never

see them again, in Ghouta.

That is the case every day in Syria,

that’s why you have to stop the killing.

That’s why we have to stop the killing.

But what do you mean by “indiscriminate” that you are talking about?

Well, the fact that chemical warfare is indiscriminate in who it kills, innocents as well as combatants.

Yeah, but you’re not talking about evidence,

you’re not talking about facts, we are talking about allegations.

So, we’re not sure that if there’s chemical weapon used

and who used it.

We can’t talk about virtual things,

we have to talk about facts.

It is said that your government delayed the United Nations observers

from getting to Ghouta and that you denied and delayed

the Red Cross then the Red Crescent from getting there

to make observations and to help.

The opposite happened, your government delayed because we asked for a delegation in March 2012

when the first attack happened in Aleppo in the north of Syria;

they delayed it till just a few days before al-Ghouta

when they sent those team,

and the team itself said in its report that he did everything as he wanted.

There was not a single obstacle.

ut they said they were delayed in getting there,

that they wanted to be there earlier.

No, no, no; there was a conflict, there was fighting, they were shooting.

That’s it. We didn’t prevent them from going anywhere.

We asked them to come; why to delay them?

Even if you want to take the American story,

they say we used chemical weapons the same day the team or the investigation team came to Syria,

is it logical?

It’s not logical. Even if a country or army wanted to use such weapon,

they should have waited a few days till the investigation finished its work.

It’s not logical, the whole story doesn’t even hold together.

We’ll come back to it. If your government did not do it, despite the evidence, who did it?

We have to be there to get the evidence like what happened in Aleppo when we had evidence.

And because the United States didn’t send the team, we sent the evidence to the Russians.

But don’t you want to know the answer, if you don’t accept the evidence so far, as to who did this?

The question is who threw chemicals on the same day on our soldiers.

That’s the same question. Technically, not the soldiers.

Soldiers don’t throw missiles on themselves. So, either the rebels, the terrorists, or a third party.

We don’t have any clue yet. We have to be there to collect the evidences then we can give answer.

Well, the argument is made that the rebels don’t have their capability of using chemical weapons,

they do not have the rockets and they do not have the supply of chemical weapons that you have,

so therefore they could not have done it.

First of all, they have rockets, and they’ve been throwing rockets on Damascus for months.

That carry chemical weapons?

Rockets in general. They have the means – first.

Second, the sarin gas that they’ve been talking about for the last weeks is a very primitive gas.