President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US military should stay out of the escalating conflict in Syria after an opposition offensive on the capital, declaring in a social media post, “This is not our fight.”
As world leaders watch the progress of a rapid uprising against Syria’s Russian- and Iranian-backed president, Bashar Assad, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser insists the Biden administration has no intention of intervening.
“The United States…is not going to plunge militarily into the middle of the Syrian civil war,” Jake Sullivan told an audience in California.
He said the U.S. would continue to act as necessary to protect Islamic State — a violently anti-Western extremist group not involved in attacks but with sleeper cells in the Syrian desert — from the open exploitation the fighting presents.
A surprise march by rebels across Syria accelerated to the gates of Damascus on Saturday as government forces left the central city of Homs. The government was forced to deny rumors that Assad had fled the country.
Trump’s comments were his first in a dramatic rebel push since Syrian rebels began their advance late last month. They came while in Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.
In his post, Trump said that Assad does not deserve US support to stay in power.
Assad’s government has been aided by Russian and Iranian forces, Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias in its now 13-year-old war against opposition groups seeking his ouster. The war, which began as a mostly peaceful uprising in 2011 against the Assad family’s rule, has killed half a million people, torn Syria apart and attracted more than half a dozen foreign troops and militias.
Syrian opposition fighters remove the government Syrian flag from an official building in Salamiyah, east of Hama, Syria, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Gaith Alsaid)
The rebels are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the US designates as a terrorist group and says it has ties to al-Qaeda, although the group has severed ties to al-Qaeda.
The rebels have so far faced little resistance from the Syrian army, Russian and Iranian forces or allied militias in the country.
The wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon, as the Biden administration has seized government-held towns from Syrian opposition forces, have shown how vulnerable those countries have become.
“Assad’s backers — Iran, Russia and Hezbollah — are all weakened and distracted,” Sullivan said Saturday at an annual gathering of national security officials, defense companies and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.
“None of them are ready to give Assad the support they have given in the past,” he added later.
The U.S. has about 900 troops in Syria, including U.S. forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group.
General Brian Fenton, head of the US Special Operations Command, said he did not want to speculate on how the turmoil in Syria would affect the US military’s footprint in the country. “It’s too early to tell,” he said.
Fenton’s focus on disrupting IS operations in Syria and protecting U.S. forces remains unchanged during a panel at the Reagan event.
Syrian opposition activists and regional officials are watching closely for any sign from the incoming Trump administration, particularly how the U.S. will respond to rebel advances against Assad.
Robert Wilkie, Trump’s defense transition chief and former secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, told the same panel that the fall of the “murderous Assad regime” would be a major blow to Iran’s power.
The United Nations special envoy for Syria on Saturday called in Geneva for urgent talks to ensure an “orderly political transition” in Syria.
In his post, Trump said 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 said the rebels could oust Assad from power.
The president-elect condemned the overall U.S. handling of the war, but said Assad and the Russian military’s path might be better.
“Syria is a mess, but not our friend, and the United States has nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Don’t get involved!” He wrote in Saturday’s post.
Mous Mustafa, an influential Syrian opposition activist in Washington, interrupted the briefing to read Trump’s post to reporters and appeared choked up. He said Trump’s announcement that the U.S. should stay out of the fight was the best outcome Syrians in the anti-Assad coalition could hope for.
The rebels have been freeing political prisoners from Assad’s government prisons as they advance, seizing cities across Syria. Mustafa promised reporters on Saturday that opposition forces would be on the lookout for any American prisoners among them and would do everything possible to protect them.
Mustafa also includes Austin Tice, a suspected American journalist who has been missing for more than a decade and under Assad’s control.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham left al-Qaeda in 2016 and has worked to rebrand itself, including cracking down on some Islamic extremist groups and fighters in its territory and portraying itself as a protector of Christians and other religious minorities.
While the U.S. and United Nations still designate it a terrorist organization, Trump’s first administration told lawmakers that the U.S. would no longer target the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani.