Syrian President Bashar Assad all but ruled out his country’s participation in a US-sponsored international peace conference on the Middle East, suggesting in an interview published Thursday that the meeting has no chance for success.

Ferryman Hisham freely acknowledges that the poor and dangerous conditions of Baghdad’s roads that drive residents of the capital to despair are, for him at least, a godsend.

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei stressed that all Iraqi people and officials as well as the world of Islam are opposed to a US plan for the disintegration of the war-torn neighbor of the Islamic Republic.