Syrians' support saves me from Shah's fate - Assad

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published on Thursday that he would have been toppled long ago like the shah of Iran if his people did not support him.

"Everybody was calculating that I would fall in a small amount of time. They all miscalculated," Assad told the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, which has published excerpts from its interview with the Syrian leader over the past three days. (Reuters)