The US attack on Syria’s airbase is meant to “bolster terrorist morale” after the significant setbacks the jihadists have suffered at the hands of the Syrian army over past few weeks, President Assad’s political and media adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban said.
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“The United States felt that they have to save the terrorists and lift their morale. And the proof for that is that Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the ones who supported this attack, and they are the very countries who had been facilitating the coming of terrorists and arming them against the Syrian people and against our country,” Shaaban said.
The attack on the airbase is a “violation of international law and it is a violation of our sovereignty,” Shaaban told RT, saying she believes that it will ultimately backfire, as it exposes the relationship between the West and terrorism.
“It will only make us and our allies more determined to defeat terrorism. And it also speaks volumes about the stance of the West towards terrorism. If they are truly, in their coalition, against terrorism they should help the party who are fighting terrorism, who are the Syrian Arab Army, and Russia, and Iran,” Shaaban said.
“If they are fighting terrorism why don’t they respond to President Putin’s suggestion to make a coalition, an international coalition against terrorism?.. They killed hundreds of our soldiers in Deir-Ez-Zor and they it took weeks to acknowledge that they were killed through their airstrike. There are so many contradictions in Western discourse towards Syria. … The reality in Syria is absolutely different from what American, French and British government try to portray to Western audiences.”
Only terrorists benefited from the US missile attack, as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) jihadists took advantage of it to launch an offensive after weeks of steady SAA advances, which makes the missile strike look like a desperate attempt to actually help terrorists, Shaaban said.
“For the last few weeks, we’ve been fighting terrorists both in the suburbs of Damascus and near Damascus and particularly in Hama and Homs where the American attack took place,” she told RT. “And we achieved great achievements against ISIS and Al-Nusra and therefore the attack of the Americans on our airbase only played in hands of terrorists and lifted their morale and in fact came to support them.”
Killing soldiers and officers who are at the forefront of fighting IS and other terrorists actually puts people in Western countries in danger, Shaaban noted, saying, in her opinion, this marks the US strike as a “double crime against humanity.”
The missile strike on the airfield is a “desperate attempt by the United States to change the balance of power in favor of terrorists,” Shaaban believes.
“They have been trying for the last seven years, secretly or publicly, to help terrorists and they will not be able to achieve that, because this land is ours and we will defend this land to the last drop of our blood,” Shaaban said.
The Syrian government cannot be held accountable for the Idlib incident, which was used as a pretext for the US cruise missile strike, Shaaban stated, since the Syrian government did not control the area of Khan Sheikhoun where the alleged chemical attack took place.
Syria has previously surrendered its chemical weapons stockpile, and international organizations confirmed that the Syrian military did not possess any weaponized poisonous substances.
Terrorist-held areas, however, are off limits not only to the Syrian government, but also to international organizations. Only Turkey can access these areas in Idlib and therefore should be questioned, “along with Jabhat al-Nusra [Al-Nusra Front] and ISIS [Islamic State/IS] about the presence of any chemicals in the area,” Shaaban told RT.