Direct US-Russia clash was narrowly avoided, Assad says

Direct conflict between the US and Russia in Syria was only narrowly avoided, said Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

“We were close to having direct conflict between the Russian forces and the American forces,” Mr Assad said in an interview with Russia Today, broadcast on Thursday.

“Fortunately, it was avoided, not by the wisdom of the American leadership but by the wisdom of the Russian leadership.”

A US-led wave of western missile strikes on Syrian government targets across the country last month raised fears of a Russian response and fullblown internationalisation of the seven-year conflict.

Mr Al Assad also said that his forces – with whom Russia is allied – will recover areas held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and that US forces should learn the lesson of Iraq and leave the country.

Mr Assad said that the government “has started now opening doors of negotiations” with the SDF, a Kurdish-dominated militia alliance that controls parts of northern and eastern Syria where US forces are stationed.

“This is the first option. If not, we’re going to resort to … liberating those areas by force,” he said. “The Americans should leave, somehow they’re going to leave.

“They came to Iraq with no legal basis, and look what happened to them. They have to learn the lesson. Iraq is no exception, and Syria is no exception. People will not accept foreigners in this region any more.”

Mr Assad responded to US President Donald Trump’s description of him as “Animal Assad”, saying that “what you say is what you are”. Mr Trump called the Syrian president an animal after a poison gas attack on Douma in Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held town near Damascus, in April.

Mr Al Assad denied that his government carried out the attack, saying that his regime does not have chemical weapons and it would not have been in its interest to carry out such a strike. The Douma attack triggered strikes on Syria by the US, UK and France last month.

He also said that there were no Iranian troops in Syria despite reports that several non-Syrian fighters had been killed over the years. Mr Al Assad said that there were only Iranian officers in the country who work with the Syrian army.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group with a vast network of sources in Syria, said several Iranians were among those killed in Israeli strikes earlier this month.

Mr Al Assad, who has reconquered large parts of the country since the start of a 2015 Russian military intervention, struck a conciliatory note and said he expected wide support in former rebel-held areas.

“You have to open the doors and you have to distinguish between different kinds of people,” he said. “The majority of the people who were against the government … in the different liberated areas, actually in their hearts they are with the government.

“They could tell the difference between having a government and having chaos.”