Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he and his government would survive the civil war, having endured everything his opponents could do to topple him, and only the distant prospect of direct foreign military intervention could change that.

After steady rebel gains in the first two years of civil war, Syria became stuck in a bloody stalemate lasting months, until a June government offensive ended, which led to the capture of a strategic border town. Momentum now looks to be behind Assad.

“This was their goal in hitting our infrastructure, hitting our economy and creating complete chaos in society, so that we would become a failed state,” Assad said in an interview with Syria’s official Thawra newspaper published on Thursday, July 4.

“So far, we have not reached that stage.”

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad (C) is seen during an interview with the al-Thawra newspaper in Damascus in this handout photograph distributed by Syria’s national news agency SANA, July 3, 2013. PHOTO: REUTERS/HANDOUT

The only factor that could undermine the resilience of the government, he said, was direct foreign intervention. But he said that was unlikely, due to foreign powers’ conflicting views of an opposition movement increasingly overtaken by radical Islamist militants.

“They have used every material, emotional and psychological means available to them. The only option they have is direct foreign intervention,” he said.

“But there is hesitation and rejection (of intervention) from most countries, so if we can overcome this stage with resoluteness and awareness, we have nothing more to fear.”

Syria’s two-year uprising against Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than four decades, began as peaceful protests, but became militarized after an army crackdown.

The rebels remain strong in the north of Syria, but Assad has been slowly reinforcing his forces there with hope of retaking territory. Fierce fighting is raging around several cities in central Syria and near the capital.

Assad’s counter-offensive led the United States to announce last month military support for the opposition, a move it said would restore the balance of power ahead of any peace talks.

Despite what the president acknowledged was widespread suffering in his country, he said his government and its supporters had proved they could weather the storm.

Assad said the country’s ability to avoid “failed state” status was due, in large part, to Syrian businessmen and workers who continued to do their jobs despite the chaos.

“The Syrian people remain unbroken in every sense of the word. There is an explosion, and within minutes of the clean up, life goes back to normal,” Assad said. “They go to work even as they expect terrorist rockets and terrorist explosions and suicide bombings to happen at any moment.”

Assad’s comments come after the Syrian army began a fierce attack to retake rebel- held neighborhoods in the central city of Homs on Saturday, June 29.

Activists said jets and mortars had pounded rebel-held areas of the city that have been under siege by Assad’s troops for a year, and soldiers fought battles with rebel fighters in several districts.

“Government forces are trying to storm (Homs) from all fronts,” said an activist using the name Abu Mohammad.

There were no immediate details of casualties but video footage, uploaded by activists, showed heavy explosions and white clouds of smoke rising from what they said were rebel districts. Loud, concentrated rounds of gunfire could also be heard.

One clip showed thick black smoke rising from a mosque, identified as the 13th-century Khalid ibn al-Walid mosque, on the edge of the Khalidiyah neighborhood.

Syrian state media said the army was “achieving great progress” in Khalidiyah, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad monitoring group, said there were reports that rebels had destroyed an army tank as troops tried to penetrate the Old City in the center of Homs.

The attack on Homs follows steady military gains by Assad’s forces, backed by Lebanese Hizbullah militants, in villages in Homs province and towns close to the Lebanese border.

Three weeks ago, Hizbullah spearheaded Assad’s recapture of the border town of Qusair, a former rebel bridgehead for smuggling in guns and fighters. Last week the rebels lost another border town, Tel Kalakh.

Those gains have consolidated Assad’s control over a corridor of territory that runs from the capital Damascus through Homs to the traditional heartland of his minority Alawite sect in the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean.

Opposition sources and diplomats said the loyalist advance had tightened the siege of Homs and secured a main road link to Hizbullah strongholds in Lebanon.

Some 2,500 civilians are trapped in the Syrian town of Homs, the scene of heavy fighting, the spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement on Tuesday, July 2. Ban called on the warring sides to do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties. 

The opposition Syrian National Coalition said in a statement that it feared that Assad’s forces will use chemical weapons on the city “after the regime’s campaign on Homs failed to achieve any important results.”

Despite losing ground around Damascus and Homs, rebels registered a symbolic victory when they overran a major military checkpoint in Daraa, the southern city, where the uprising first erupted.

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory, said the fall of the army post was strategically significant and could change the balance of power in Daraa, where rebels control most of the old city.

The province of Daraa, which borders with Jordan, has been a conduit for arms supplies to the rebels.

As the war rages in Syria, no date has been set for Geneva 2, the long-awaited international peace conference for Syria.

Secretary of State John Kerry said the conference will not be held before the end of August, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Hizbullah-affiliated TV channel Al-Manar that the conference must be held with no preconditions by the opposition.

Inviting Iran, Assad’s ally, to the conference has been a major point of disagreement between the U.S. and Russia.  

—  Reuters, TAAN