Syrians Can't 'Slaughter Their Way to Legitimacy,' Obama Says While Slamming Iran and Russia

— -- President Obama today used his year-end news conference to rebuke the ongoing civil war in Syria, saying the regime there “cannot slaughter their way to legitimacy.”

The president also condemned what he said was the role of foreign governments, including Russia and Iran, in prompting the violence in Syria.

“Responsibility for this brutality lies in one place alone with the Assad regime and its allies, Russia and Iran, and this blood and these atrocities are on their hands,” he said after specifically mentioning the Syrian government's offensive assault in the major city of Aleppo this month that has led to thousands of civilian deaths and exacerbated the refuge crisis in the region.

“We've seen entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble and dust,” Obama added. “There are continuing reports of civilians being executed. These are all horrific violations of international law.”

The brutal and bloody civil war in the Mideast country has plagued the Obama administration for the past five years and put the White House in direct confrontation with the Russian government. Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin have backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Obama today again called out Russia for using its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to block international efforts to get outside humanitarian aid into the country and demand further monitoring of chemical weapons in Syria.

The president said that in the immediate future he would continue to argue with the Russian and Syrian governments that tens of thousands of innocent civilians were still trapped in Aleppo and trying to flee.

Obama acknowledged that there are observers in the city trying to coordinate evacuations, but called for the international community to do more. “Our biggest priority is to continue to put pressure wherever we can to try to get them out,” he said.

Obama has said in the past that the conflict, and the role the United States should play, has haunted him personally. A month from the end of his time in office, he again called it "one of the hardest issues" he has faced, but stood by his decision to provide modest support to rebels in the country fighting against Assad. He described poring over maps with his team and struggling to find any answer that did not involve putting U.S. troops on the ground.

"Wherever we went through it, the challenge was that short of putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate, without sufficient support from Congress at a time when we still had troops in Afghanistan and we still had troops in Iraq and we had just gone through over a decade of war," he said.

He added that tragedies around the world weighed on him and made him feel “responsible” for not finding solutions.

"I ask myself every single day, is there something I could do that would save lives and make a difference? And spare some child who doesn't deserve to suffer," he said.

It has been the position of his administration that a political solution and compromise would be necessary to end the violence in Syria. He said the regime there could not “slaughter their way to legitimacy.”