Bashar al-Assad says US will fail if it intervenes in Syria

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Russia’s Izvestia newspaper In an interview published on Monday in Russia’s Izvestia newspaper, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad deemed claims made by Western countries that his government has used chemical weapons as “an insult to common sense” and “nonsense.”
Assad also warned Washington in that any U.S. military intervention in Syria would fail.
"Failure awaits the United States as in all previous wars it has unleashed, starting with Vietnam and up to the present day," he told the pro-Kremlin newspaper in an interview which the Russian daily said was conducted in Damascus.
Assad said Syrian government troops had been close to the area, in the suburbs of Damascus, where rebel forces accused his forces of firing chemical poison projectiles last week.
"Would any state use chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction in a place where its own forces are concentrated? That would go against elementary logic," he told the newspaper.
"So, accusations of this kind are entirely political and the reason for them is the government forces' series of victories over the terrorists," Assad said, referring to rebels fighting in the two-year-old civil war.
According to the embattled Syrian leader, the US along with Britain and France had long sought to justify a military intervention in Syria.
Russia has been Assad's most important international ally during the conflict.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned his US counterpart John Kerry of the "extremely dangerous consequences of a possible new military intervention for the whole Middle East and North Africa region".
The latest allegations have driven a new wedge between Russia and the West, with Moscow saying the suspected attack was a rebel ploy to discredit the Assad regime. China has backed a UN investigation into the charges, but urged a "cautious" response.
US President Barack Obama has been reluctant to order US military action to protect civilians in Syria, fearing being drawn into a vicious civil war, soon after he extracted US troops from Iraq.
But revulsion over video footage and gruesome photographs of dead children blanketing the world's media has seen mounting pressure on the international community.
US officials said Obama, who had said a year ago that the use of chemical weapons by Assad's forces was a "red line" that could trigger Western intervention, would make an "informed decision" about how to respond.
Experts believe the most likely US action would see sea-launched cruise missiles target Syrian military installations and artillery batteries deemed complicit in the chemical weapons attack.
Weapons fired from US planes outside the country could also be used, to minimise the risk to US or allied pilots from Syrian air defences.
Syrian authorities had approved the UN inspection of the site in Ghouta east of Damascus on Sunday, but US officials said it was too little, too late, arguing that persistent shelling there in recent days had "corrupted" the site.