A still image taken from the inauguration video of Syria’s president Bashar Al Assad who was sworn in, on July 16.

DAMASCUS — Bashar al-Assad was sworn in for a new term as Syria’s president on Wednesday, July 16, after a June 3 election, which his opponents dismiss as a sham but which he said proved he had achieved victory after a “dirty war” to unseat him.

Once written off in the West as certain to fall, he launches his seven-year term in his securest position since the early days of the three-year-old war. Those close to Damascus say he now believes his Western and regional foes will be forced to deal with him as a bulwark against Islamist militants who advanced across northern Iraq last month.

At his inauguration he delivered a defiant speech, vowing to recover all Syria from Islamist insurgents and warning that Western and Arab countries would pay dearly for supporting rebels he described as terrorists.

Looking calm and confident, the president of 14 years repeatedly took aim at the West and Gulf Arab monarchies who have funded and armed the rebels that have taken control of much of the north and east of his country.

“Soon we will see the Arab, regional and Western states that supported terrorism pay a high price,” he said in the speech at the presidential palace in Damascus, broadcast on state TV.

“I repeat my call today to those who were misled to put down their guns, because we will not stop fighting terrorism and striking it wherever it is until we restore security to every spot of Syria,” Assad said. 

“This is completely separated from reality. Assad is going on as if everything is normal and as if he didn’t lose two-thirds of the country,” said Monzer Akbik of the Western-backed National Coalition opposition group. “It was a theatrical election and this is a theatrical swearing in.” Syria’s war has been the battleground for a sectarian struggle between groups supported by Sunni Muslim states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and Assad’s government, backed by Shi’ite Iran.

Last month it spread dramatically in Iraq, where an al Qaeda offshoot operating on both sides of the frontier, the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), seized cities, changed its name to the Islamic State and declared its leader ruler of all Muslims.

ISIS has officially been rejected as a terrorist group by the Gulf states that support other Sunni fighters in Syria, but Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran all blame the Gulf kingdoms for supporting the wider Sunni militancy that feeds it.

Those around Assad now feel that the ISIS threat will force Western leaders to seek a way to work with him against the common foe, said Salem Zahran, a Lebanese political analyst who is sympathetic to Assad and meets Syrian officials regularly.

“The Syrian leadership truly feels that the time of isolation is over.”