WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump stated on Saturday that the US military should remain out of Syria’s rapidly escalating crisis, where a spectacular rebel push has approached the capital and threatens the government of the country’s Russian- and Iranian-backed president. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT,” Trump declared on social media.
As international leaders observed the remarkable rebel advance, which had the potential to shift the balance of power in the Middle East, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser reiterated that the Biden administration had no intention of interfering.
“The United States is not going to… militarily dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war,” Jake Sullivan told a California audience.
Sullivan said the US would continue to assist as needed to prevent the Islamic State — a viciously anti-Western extremist group that is not known to be involved in the offensive but has sleeper cells in Syria’s deserts — from exploiting opportunities created by the conflict.
The insurgents’ remarkable march throughout Syria appeared to have reached its goal hours after both men talked, with rebels storming Damascus after capturing many of the country’s other major cities in about ten days. The head of a Syrian opposition war monitor announced early Sunday that Assad had departed the nation for an unidentified location.
Trump’s remarks on the stunning rebel push were his first since the Syrian rebels launched their offensive late last month. They arrived while he was in Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.
In his article, Trump stated that Assad did not deserve US help to remain in power.
Assad’s administration has been supported by the Russian and Iranian militaries, as well as Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied militias, in a 13-year fight against opposition organizations seeking his overthrow. The war, which began as a relatively nonviolent protest against the Assad family’s leadership in 2011, has killed 500,000 people, shattered Syria, and drew in more than a half-dozen foreign troops and militias. Early on, the United States closed its embassy in Syria and imposed sanctions in response to Assad’s ruthless conduct of the conflict.
The militants are commanded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the US has branded as a terrorist group and claims to have ties to al-Qaida, despite the fact that the group has since severed relations with the organization.
So far, the militants have seen minimal resistance from the Syrian army, the Russian and Iranian forces, or the country’s supported militias.
The Biden administration said that the ease with which Syrian opposition forces captured government-held cities showed how Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as Iran’s and Iranian militias’ fight against Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, have weakened them.
“Assad’s backers — Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah — have all been weakened and distracted,” Sullivan said Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, where national security experts, defense corporations, and lawmakers assemble annually.
“None of them are prepared to provide the kind of support to Assad that they provided in the past,” he said at the time.
The United States has approximately 900 troops in Syria, including those working with Kurdish partners in the opposition-held northeast to prevent the Islamic State group’s comeback.
Gen. Bryan Fenton, director of US Special Operations Command, declined to speculate on how the upheaval in Syria will influence the US military’s presence in the nation. “It’s still too early to tell,” he remarked.
The goal on blocking IS operations in Syria and protecting US troops would remain unchanged, according to Fenton during a panel at the Reagan event.
Syrian opposition activists and regional politicians have been carefully looking for any hint from the new Trump administration on how the United States will respond to rebel advances against Assad.
During the same California event, Robert Wilkie, Trump’s defense transition chief and former Secretary of Veterans Affairs, stated that the fall of the “murderous Assad regime” would provide a tremendous blow to Iran’s strength.
In his article, Trump said that Russia “is so tied up in Ukraine” that it “seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years.” He suggested that rebels may force Assad from power.
The president-elect criticized the United States’ overall handling of the conflict, but said that routing Assad and Russian forces may be for the best.
“Syria is a disaster, but it is not our buddy, and the United States should have no involvement in it. This is not our fight. Allow it to play out. “DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he said in a Saturday post.
Mouaz Moustafa, an influential Syrian opposition activist in Washington, interrupted a press briefing to read Trump’s message and looked to choke up. He said Trump’s decision that the United States should withdraw from the conflict was the best outcome that Syrians opposed to Assad could hope for.
As they move across Syria, rebels are liberating political captives held by the Assad regime from official jails. Moustafa promised reporters on Saturday that opposition forces would keep an eye out for any US detainees and do everything possible to safeguard them.
According to Moustafa, this includes Austin Tice, an American journalist who has been missing for more than a decade and is suspected of being kept by Assad.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham abandoned al-Qaida in 2016 and has tried to rebrand itself, including cracking down on some Islamic extremist groups and fighters in its territory while portraying itself as a protector of Christians and other religious minorities.
While the United States and the United Nations continue to classify it as a terrorist organization, Trump’s first administration informed legislators that the US was no longer targeting the group’s head, Abu Mohammed al-Golani.