President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US military should stay out of Syria’s rapidly escalating conflict, where a dramatic rebel offensive has reached the capital and threatens the rule of the country’s Russian- and Iranian-backed president. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT,” Trump declared via social media.
As world leaders watched the stunning 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 intervening.
“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 act as needed to prevent the Islamic State — a violently anti-Western extremist group that is not known to be involved in the offensive but has sleeper cells in Syria’s deserts — from exploiting openings created by the conflict.
The insurgents’ stunning march across Syria appeared to have reached its goal hours after both men spoke, with rebels entering 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 left the country for an undisclosed location.
Trump’s remarks on the dramatic 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 post, Trump stated that Assad did not deserve US support to remain in power.
Assad’s government has been supported by the Russian and Iranian militaries, as well as Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied militias, in a 13-year war against opposition groups seeking his overthrow.
The war, which began as a mostly peaceful uprising against the Assad family’s rule in 2011, has killed 500,000 people, shattered Syria, and drew in more than a half-dozen foreign militaries and militias.
Early on, the United States closed its embassy in Syria and imposed sanctions in response to Assad’s brutal conduct of the war.
The insurgents are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the US has designated as a terrorist group and claims to have ties to al-Qaida, despite the fact that the group has since severed ties with the organization.
So far, the insurgents have faced little resistance from the Syrian army, the Russian and Iranian militaries, or the country’s allied militias.
The Biden administration claimed that the ease with which Syrian opposition forces captured government-held cities demonstrates 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 officials, defense companies, and lawmakers gather 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 forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent the Islamic State group’s resurgence.
Gen. Bryan Fenton, head of US Special Operations Command, declined to speculate on how the upheaval in Syria would affect the US military’s presence in the country. “It’s still too early to tell,” he said.
The focus on disrupting 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 officials have been closely watching for any indication from the incoming 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 deal a major blow to Iran’s power.
In his post, Trump claimed 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 could force Assad from power.
The president-elect criticized the United States’ overall handling of the war, but suggested that routing Assad and Russian forces may be for the best.
“Syria is a mess, but it is not our friend, 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 wrote in a Saturday post.
Mouaz Moustafa, an influential Syrian opposition activist in Washington, interrupted a press briefing to read Trump’s post and appeared to choke up.
He said Trump’s declaration that the United States should withdraw from the conflict was the best outcome that Syrians opposed to Assad could hope for.
As they advance across Syria, rebels are freeing political detainees held by the Assad regime from government prisons.
Moustafa promised reporters on Saturday that opposition forces would keep an eye out for any US detainees and do everything possible to protect 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 held by Assad.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham abandoned al-Qaida in 2016 and has worked 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 designate it as a terrorist organization, Trump’s first administration informed lawmakers that the US was no longer targeting the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani.
