TEHERAN, October 1. /TASS/. The coalition of Russia, Iran, Syria and Iraq has no other choice but to win, otherwise the entire Middle East region will be ruined, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview with Iran’s IRINN news channel.

"The coalition consisting of Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq must succeed or the region will be destroyed," he said.

The Syrian authorities, according to Assad, do not trust the United States due to the policy that country and its allies are pursuing in the Middle East.

He said the damage done to the country’s infrastructure in the five years of the warfare is estimated at more than 200 billion U.S. dollars. As many as 250,000 people gave been killed in the conflict and six to seven million more have been driven out of their homes.

When asked to comment of the West’s changing position, which now doesn’t rule out Assad’s possible participation in an interim government, the Syrian leader said, "I am saying clearly and resolutely, no foreigner can bear responsibility for Syria’s future, for the future of its political system." "Only the Syrian people has the right to express its views on these issues, so all these Western comments are useless for us," Assad stressed.

He said the Syrian people had paid an excessive price to agree to become a dependent nation "implementing the will of foreign states." As for the West’s position, it has begun to change after Europe came to face manifestations of terrorism and refugee influx, he added.

Refugee problem will be solved after extermination of terrorism

The problem of Syrian refugees will be solver after extermination of terrorism in Syria, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview with Iran’s IRINN news channel.

He said that to solve the problem of Syrian refugees it was necessary first to defeat terrorism and stop helping terrorists with weapons and fiancing from Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Syria’s future will be decided in political dialogue

Syria’s future will be decided on the basis of political dialogue and nationwide referendum on a new constitution, Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Sunday in an interview with Iran’s IRINN news channel.

He pledged to be committed to this path. "But dialogue could be started only after defeat of terrorism," he said.

When asked whether contact between Russia and the United States on Syria could be seen as interference into Syria’s domestic affairs or whether Russia’s assistance could end up in such interference, Assad said the sixty-year history of his country’s relations with the former Soviet Union and Russia as its successor had demonstrated that Russia had never interfered into Syrian domestic affairs. "On the contrary, Russia and other countries of the BRICS group are trying to prevent such interference and violation of relevant resolutions of the United Nations Security Council on Syria," he said. "These states have always been insisting that matters of Syria’s future political system and its future president are domestic affairs of Syria that are to be decided by the Syrian people," he stressed.

Terrorism in Syria provoked from outside

Terrorism in Syria has been provoked from outside, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview with Iran’s IRINN news channel on Sunday.

He said it was clear from the very beginning that terrorism in Syria had been provoked from outside to wreak havoc and destabilize the country. In his words, the Syrian government had learnt the lessons from the political crisis and a wave of protests on March 2011 and was committed to the efforts to counter terrorism.

When asked by an Iranian correspondent why the anti-terrorist efforts of the Western coalition were to no avail, Assad noted drew a parallel, saying that a thief could never be a police hand. He said the alliance supporting terrorism can never succeed in exterminating it. "After several months of bombardments by the Western coalition, we saw no results, moreover, the result was just the opposite - the geography of terrorism has only expanded and the number of people who joined terrorists was only growing," he said.