Reality Check

Assad: U.S. ISIS Airstrikes Not Helping

“We haven’t sensed any change.”

The U.S.-led coalition’s more than two-month-old airstrike campaign against ISIS militants in Syria has not significantly altered the shape of the battlefield, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview to be published Thursday. “It’s we who are battling against ISIS on the ground, and we haven’t sensed any change,” Assad told the French magazine Paris Match, according to portions of the interview published on the website of Syria’s state-run media. He also denied that the aerial assault had provided a boost to Syrian government forces in their battle against ISIS. “To say that the coalition’s airstrikes are helping us is incorrect,” Assad told the magazine.