Did Syrian President Bashar Assad announce he is resigning from his post? No, that's not true. President Assad did not step down, and the videos and audio used to support these claims have been manipulated.
The claim appeared in posts like this video (archived here), published on Tiktok on September 4, 2023, under the title (translated from Arabic by Lead Stories) "Bashar Assad officially steps down from his presidency, handing over power to the Syrian parliament." It opened:
Our Citizens, in these difficult times the country is going through, and as a result of the current deterioration of the situation of the Syrian people, I Bashar Al-Assad, admit full responsibility for what has happened to the country during the past years, I have decided to leave the presidency, and hand over power to the parliament speaker.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Friday, September 8, 13:08:01 2023 UTC)
This claim has been fabricated. Syrian President Bashar Assad did not announce his resignation through an online audio or video statement. This post uses an old video of President Assad addressing the Syrian parliament on March 30, 2011, and a lip-sync error is noticeable, indicating that the audio was manipulated. Although you can hear a voice similar to President Assad's announcing his resignation, the audio does not match the video.
The same audio appears in other posts with different pictures, like this video (archived here), which only contains audio of the resignation message with a still image of President Assad.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Friday, September 8, 14:08:01 2023 UTC)
