In an interview with Syrian daily Al-Thawra published on Thursday, Assad said that the West believed that “these Takfiri (extremist) terrorist groups that have been a security concern for decades will come to Syria and be killed and that way they will get rid of them.”
The Syrian President emphasized that the western countries hoped that by "supporting terrorism in Syria" they could weaken the Arab country.
Assad also said that the countries supporting militants in Syria and providing them with military and financial aid no longer refer to the crisis as a “revolution.”
"The word revolution is no longer mentioned, now what's being talked about is terrorism," he said, adding, "They've moved to another phase. They distinguish between a good terrorist and a bad terrorist... but the word revolution is no longer mentioned."
Syria has been gripped by unrest since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security forces, have been killed in the violence.
The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, are supporting the militants.
Several international human rights organizations have said that the militants operating in Syria are committing war crimes.
On July 1, Syria’s Local Administration Minister Omar al-Ibrahim Ghalaounji said that foreign-sponsored terrorism in the country damaged about 9,000 state buildings and cost USD 15 billion in losses to the public sector between March 2011 and March 2013.
He added that the damage was the result of "terrorist attacks on government buildings and infrastructure."
