President-elect Donald Trump signaled on Saturday that he believes the United States should not get involved in the conflict in Syria, sending a signal about possible future U.S. policy toward the region as rebel groups made stunning advances to encircle the Syrian capital of Damascus.
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT,” Trump warned in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, while in Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral and meetings with world leaders. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”
Trump said that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – which has been bolstered by Russia, Iran and outside militias – did not deserve American support to maintain power some 13 years into its civil war. He also argued that Russia “seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria” because “they are so tied up in Ukraine.”
The president-elect suggested it might be for the best that rebels topple Assad’s government. He also criticized then-President Barack Obama’s 2013 decision not to launch airstrikes against Syria after Assad used chemical weapons to kill his own people – despite having previously said that the use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” triggering an American military response.
The rebels’ campaign to seize Syria from Assad’s government is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization that aims to establish Islamic rule in Syria. HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, once commanded an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria but has disavowed the group’s extremist roots and has sought to expel any Islamic State supporters from his enclave. The group has also said Syrian Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities would live safely under its rule.
Even as his army was on the march in the past two weeks, Jolani has gone out of his way to present his reformer’s credentials to Western audiences, offering interviews with CNN and the New York Times. Jolani told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2021 that unlike al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, it is “completely against our policies to carry out external operations from Syria to target European or American people.”
The United States – which has about 900 American troops in Syria – has sought to distance itself from the offensive, suggesting that it is a product of conditions made possible by Syria’s reliance on Russia and Iran.
In the first months of Trump’s first term as president, the U.S. military launched 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield, which was then the first direct American assault on the Assad government since that country’s civil war had begun. The Trump administration authorized the missile launch in retaliation for a 2017 chemical attack that killed scores of civilians.
In December 2018, he ordered the withdrawal of 2,000 American troops from Syria, ending a military campaign that largely eliminated the Islamic State in a country where the Assad regime maintained the support of Russian and Iranian proxies. In October 2019, he ordered the withdrawal of American forces from northern Syria, effectively ceding Western influence in the country to Iran and Russia.
Aron Lund, a Middle Eastern affairs expert who is a fellow at the think tank Century International, told The Washington Post that Trump’s recent comments about staying out of the Syria conflict may “help lock down U.S. noninvolvement.”
“I’m not hugely surprised by Trump saying that the United States should stay out of Syria’s crises. That has been his view pretty consistently,” Lund said. “Still, it’s fair to ask how much you really can remain aloof from a country where you have troops deployed and where your local partner force controls a fourth of the territory. That’s a problem he’s going to have to grapple with from January onward.”
Some individuals set to serve as Trump’s top national security advisers in his incoming administration have had mixed thoughts on Trump’s past decisions in the region.
Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), who Trump has named to serve as his national security adviser, said in 2019 that the decision to withdraw from northern Syria was “a strategic mistake” and that he feared the withdrawal would create conditions for ISIS to return to the region.
Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump has picked to serve as director of national intelligence, met with Assad in early 2017 during a “fact-finding” trip to Syria. She has said meeting with Assad while she was a member of Congress representing Hawaii was not planned.
In an interview with CNN after the trip, she said that when “the opportunity arose to meet with him,” she did so because “we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there’s a possibility that we could achieve peace. And that’s exactly what we talked about.”
Gabbard has also repeatedly described Trump as a liar and a hypocrite for his actions in Syria. She called the 2019 U.S. missile strike against Syria “dangerous, rash and unconstitutional” and said Trump acted “recklessly.”
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(c) Washington Post
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