US Secretary of State Marco Rubio final Thursday met with Syrian International Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and different ruling Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) officers in Antalya, Turkey – simply as President Trump controversially greeted Syria’s new ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa (Jolani) in Riyadh. Rubio’s was the primary such US assembly with a Syrian international minister in fifteen years, the State Division later mentioned.
Following this, Rubio on Tuesday went earlier than the Senate International Relations Committee to defend the administration’s dropping of all Syria sanctions, so as to “give them an opportunity” – as Trump mentioned of Syria whereas on his Gulf go to. Rubio sounded an alarm, warning that the already war-torn nation could possibly be weeks away from civil struggle and collapse of the HTS authorities. Watch:
Syria is probably going on the verge of ‘full scale civil struggle’ — Marco Rubio
The US state secretary laments the nation’s present rulers ‘did not go their background examine with the FBI’ https://t.co/gBUH1gCYwa pic.twitter.com/g2mY1UMcZC
— RT (@RT_com) May 20, 2025
“It’s our evaluation that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re going through, are perhaps weeks — not many months — away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil struggle of epic proportions, principally the nation splitting up,” Rubio advised the Senate listening to. There have for weeks been operating road battles between HTS and Druze factions within the south and in suburbs of Damascus.
Describing the rationale behind dropping the years-long brutal US sanctions, Rubio mentioned: “We need to assist that authorities succeed, as a result of the choice is full-scale civil struggle and chaos, which might, in fact, destabilize all the area.”
After all, the supreme and darkish irony right here is that it was Washington which led destabilization efforts in Syria during the last decade within the first place, with the CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore. Assad fled the nation on December 8, and since then the brutal Islamist group HTS and US-designated terrorist Sharaa/Jolani has dominated from Damascus.
🔥all the pieces is ok🔥 pic.twitter.com/RIrzRbjLn3
— Hassan Ridha (@sayed_ridha) May 20, 2025
To state the apparent, simply perhaps the US ought to not have sought to overthrow the largely secular authorities of Bashar al-Assad, which protected the minority non secular communities now being massacred by HTS? Christians, Alawites, Druze, and secularists of all strips in Syria at the moment are residing in a brand new darkish ages.
Rubio really mentioned earlier than the senators that “When Syria is unstable, the area turns into unstable.”
However, he continued, “If we have interaction them, it could work out, it could not work out. If we didn’t have interaction them, it was assured to not work out.”
Vital “Islamic State Chief Omar al-Shishani Fought Underneath U.S. Umbrella as Late as 2013” by @BradRHoff https://t.co/JQg5TwcLDp
— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) March 10, 2016
It needs to be recalled that over the previous a long time Rubio himself as a senator had referred to as for regime change in Damascus on many events.
For instance, in 2015 – at a second the Islamic State was making features in jap Syria and throughout the area, Rubio mentioned “Ending Assad’s reign of terror as soon as and for all will probably be, too. And each will probably be rather more tough than if we had acted on the outset of the civil struggle in Syria, as a few of us urged President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. However it’s nonetheless not not possible.”
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Expensive Marco,
In calling for Assad’s removing and approving regime change efforts and insurance policies as a US Senator over the prior decade, that is who you helped empower (information footage under).
Signed,
Syria’s Persecuted Christians
