Damascus, Syria, September 23 - The leader of a state deeply enmeshed in the support and arming of groups violently targeting civilian populations as a means of achieving political aims told visiting dignitaries today that he backs US-led efforts to combat groups violently targeting civilian populations as a means of achieving political aims.
President Basher Assad of Syria, who hosts the headquarters of various Palestinian terrorist organizations, told an Iraqi official that he welcomes any international operation to oppose terrorism. The president, whose government is currently involved in bloody civil war that has so far claimed nearly 200,000 lives and left millions homeless, considers the various rebel groups fighting its forces terrorists, even as his air force and army have used chemical weapons and indiscriminately targeted civilian areas for firebombing.
One of the chief sponsors of the Lebanese terrorist militia Hezbollah was apparently trying to portray his regime as anti-terror as the mostly Arab coalition conducted air strikes in and around Raqqa, the de facto capital of the emerging Islamic State. He accused other Arab states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia of sponsoring terrorism, as they have backed some of Assad's foes instead of him.
Assad's remarks echoed those of Iran, also a Hezbollah sponsor, calling for action against terrorism. The regime in Tehran, which supports the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad, also expressed interest in joining the effort against terrorism.
The statement is not the first case of a Middle East sponsor of terrorism speaking out against terrorism. Longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continually denounced Israeli actions to neutralize Palestinian terrorism as "terrorism," while fomenting further terrorism against Israel. His successor Mahmoud Abbas takes a less active role in funneling funding and arms to terrorists in his organization's ranks, but continues to label Israel's actions terrorism and hold forth on the need to eliminate terrorism, while himself engaging in incitement to terrorism and in glorification of terrorists.