Politics & Power Quote by Bashar al-Assad

A line like this is engineered less as analysis than as a wedge. Assad isn’t offering a policy seminar; he’s trying to loosen a staple assumption of US Middle East politics: that backing Israel is synonymous with “American interests.” By inserting “not necessarily,” he keeps the claim deniable and diplomatic on its face while still inviting the listener to imagine a whole catalogue of betrayals, misadventures, and costs borne by Washington. It’s a careful kind of provocation: sharp enough to sting, soft enough to circulate.

The subtext is coalition-building. Assad aims this at multiple audiences at once: Arab publics primed to see Washington as captive to an ally; European skeptics of US intervention; and Americans tired of open-ended commitments. The phrasing also performs a strategic inversion. Instead of Syria being cast as the problem-state needing discipline, the US becomes the actor misreading its own self-interest, manipulated into choices that inflame the region and, by extension, American security.

Context matters. Coming from an embattled Syrian leader, the sentence is also reputational laundering: a bid to sound like a realist, not a pariah. It’s a way to reframe Syria’s confrontation with Israel and the US not as ideological obstinacy, but as rational resistance to an ill-aligned alliance. The rhetorical move is simple: if interests diverge, loyalty becomes naivete, and dissent can be repackaged as prudence.