Bashar al-Assad isn’t going anywhere. In an interview with Le Figaro, the Syrian president called the Middle East a “powder keg” and warned that an military intervention would unleash “chaos and extremism.” The only way to deal with rebels, he said, was to “annihilate them.” He also called France an “enemy of the Syrian people.” Meanwhile, France published its own intelligence report yesterday that found Assad culpable in the recent chemical-weapons attacks that killed hundreds.
