Quote

Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East.

Those who back the Syrian regime from now on will find themselves in an even more isolated and indefensible minority.

I think Syria is in a particularly sensitive geopolitical position in terms of the politics of the Middle East.

What we did say is that it is up to the Syrians themselves to decide how to run the country, how to introduce the reforms, what kind reforms, without any outside interference.

There is no one leader that's going to unify all of Syria that suddenly everyone is going to go, 'Yes, that's a logical place.' They're not unified. They don't have a setup succession like we do in the United States.

I explained that we would like to adjust our position on the Syrian question to theirs, as, in our view, they are the decisive factor in our relations with our neighbors, and Syria is unimportant.

We've got a very difficult situation created by this embrace of the so-called Arab Spring. And that's not getting better. It's getting worse. The carnage for the people of Syria is horrific, and it's quite frankly too little, too late to reverse a lot of that.

Syria should not belong to one family, to one coterie, or to one party. It belongs to all the people of Syria equally, in all their religious and ethnic diversity.

Here's the problem the Free Syrian Army has. They really want to topple the regime in Damascus, and this is where most of the fight takes place, between Aleppo and Damascus for the Free Syrian Army.