Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad said Sunday that the three-year civil war is turning in the government’s favor, state television reported.
“This is a turning point in the crisis, both militarily in terms of the army’s achievements in the war against terror, and socially in terms of national reconciliation processes and growing awareness of the truth behind the [attacks] targeting the country,” the television quoted Assad as saying, Agence France-Presse reported.
Last week, the head of Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which supports Assad’s regime, said that the Syrian president was no longer in danger of falling.
“The danger of the Syrian regime’s fall has ended,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with daily newspaper As-Safir.
The rebels “can opt for a war of attrition as long as there are countries funding it … But on the horizon, the opposition doesn’t seem to be able to wage a big war,” he added. “What is happening in Latakia and Kassab, we can’t call it a big war.”
Nasrallah said the three-year Syrian conflict has proved that the Assad regime is not “weak,” and the president enjoys “wide support.”
“We have passed the danger of dividing [Syria],” he said, adding that there were diplomatic offers given to President Assad from Arab states if he cuts ties with Iran.
‘Support and protection’
He also added that Russia, after annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, will further its “support and protection to Syria.
Hezbollah militants have been fighting alongside Syrian government troops against the rebels trying to oust Assad from power.
The Syrian conflict has evolved into a full-scale civil war with sectarian overtones and Islamic extremists, including foreign fighters and Syrian rebels who have taken up hard-line al-Qaeda-style ideologies, have played an increasingly prominent role among fighters, dampening the West’s support.
Since the revolt began in March 2011, 150,000 people have been killed and nine million have been driven from their homes, including 2.6 million international refugees.
*Agencies