The United States commenced its attempts to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2006, way before the opposition protest in the country in 2011, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — “We published cables … showing that the US has been trying to overthrow the Syrian government since at least 2006,” Assange told Greek ThePressProject news site on Monday.

According to Assange, Washington “was trying to make the Syrian government ‘paranoid’ trying to get it to ‘overreact’ by instilling that fear and paranoia, trying to make it worried about coups, trying to stir up sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias …, to stop foreign investment in Syria and by secretly funding a variety of NGOs in Syria.”

Besides, the United States made Syria look weak by pushing the fact that it was trying to crack down on terrorists as an example of the Syrian government not having full control of the country, Assange added.

Syria has been in a civil war since 2011, with the government fighting multiple opposition factions and militant groups, including the Islamic State jihadist group.

Since the beginning of the war, the United States and some of its allies have been supporting the so-called moderate Syrian opposition, while urging Assad to resign.