Syria’s Assad says British airstrikes against IS will fail

British airstrikes on ISIS will fail to defeat the militant group, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with the Sunday Times newspaper, mocking Prime Minister David Cameron’s strategy in the region.

Assad was referring to the U.S.-led coalition that began launching airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria in September 2014.

Wednesday’s decision to expand the strikes to Syria came after a 10-hour debate by parliamentarians in the House of Commons.

Power said Russian Federation and Iran must shift their positions on the political transition, “because they cannot achieve their objectives on [Daesh] as long as Assad is in power”.

The PM said the “moderates” would open a political solution to the war, and retake territory from jihadists after they had been weakened by air strikes.

Fabius said Syrian government forces and other “regional forces” should unite in order for the fight against the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group to be effective.

While the western bombing campaign has fuelled extremism, Assad believes that two months of Russian air strikes with ground support from the Syrian army has actually damaged the Islamists’ capabilities.

The president also said that France had only stepped up its bombing of Islamic State targets in Syria after the Paris terror attacks “to dissipate the feeling of the French (people)”.

According to the politician, the political fate of Bashar al-Assad should be decided by the Syrian people in the course of future democratic elections. “They can not defeat ISIS by airstrikes; they are going to fail again”, Assad said. “You have to extract it”.

Speaking about the British airstrikes, Assad said they “will be harmful and illegal, and it will support terrorism as what happened after the coalition started its operation”. “That will make it spread in the body faster”. You can not defeat them if you do not have buy-in from the general public and the government.

While Assad’s regime has been criticized by the West, which has called on him to step down and end the long-drawn Syrian civil war that has killed thousands and rendered millions homeless, the recent emergence of ISIS has triggered an aerial campaign aimed at eliminating the group’s activities.

It says its raids focus on IS and other “terrorists”, but other rebels and their backers accuse Moscow of targeting moderate and Islamist opposition fighters over militants.