Syrian President Bashar Assad addressed the voices of war and peace in the Middle East for the first time Sunday evening. Speaking in a meeting with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berry, Assad stressed that his government and the Syrian people would stand by Lebanon "in any case of an Israeli attack which it may face."

Official Syrian news agency SANA reported that the two discussed "the repeated Israeli threats against the region's countries and Israeli extremism threatening to destroy the chances for peace by igniting the region with wars and taking it into the unknown."