Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was quoted by a British newspaper on Tuesday as defending his country’s right to acquire weapons of mass destruction so long as it faced “aggression” by Israel. Assad was speaking in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, which said he came closer than ever before to admitting that the Arab state had such weapons, a U.S. charge Damascus has repeatedly denied in the past. “We are a country which is (partly) occupied and from time to time we are exposed to Israeli aggression,” the newspaper quoted Assad as saying when asked about the U.S. allegations. Full Story