In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who rarely speaks to the Western press, cast the violence in Syria as a war against Salafi terrorists, who are backed by predominantly Sunni Arab nations that expected the Bashar al-Assad regime to fall quickly amid the Arab uprisings that swept Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen.

But those who anticipated Assad's fall and armed anti-regime militants miscalculated, Moallem said, and the result has been the dramatic escalation of armed conflict that has taken an estimated 20,000 Syrian lives over the past 20 months.

"If ending the violence was in the hands of the Syrian government, then I assure you we would have ended it yesterday," Moallem said. "Unfortunately, it is not a Syrian government decision. It is in fact Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, who are arming, hosting, and financing these armed groups. So the decision is there."

“When they started this crisis in Syria they felt that within a couple of months everything would change, as it's happened in Tunis and Egypt and Libya,” Moallem, himself a Sunni Muslim, said. But Turkey and other Western and Arab powers were "mistaken,” because the Syrians, he said, “are different.” Despite casting blame for the conflict on external powers, Moallem told Al-Monitor that Syria welcomes mediation efforts, including those of Lakhdar Brahimi, the new joint UN/Arab League Syria envoy.