President-elect Donald J. Trump will inherit a dangerous new Middle East crisis in Syria when he assumes office in January. But how he might approach a nation now controlled by rebels with terrorist roots is unclear, and may be decided by fierce competing arguments among advisers and foreign leaders in the months to come.
There are many good reasons to expect Mr. Trump to take a hands-off approach to Syria, which erupted into civil war in 2011. One is Mr. Trump’s apparent disdain for the country, which he has branded a land of “sand and death.”
Mr. Trump has also long railed against broader U.S. efforts to reshape former Middle East dictatorships such as Iraq and Libya, in what he calls America’s “endless wars.” As rebels entered Damascus, Syria’s capital, over the weekend, Mr. Trump posted on social media that the country was “a mess” and that the United States “should have nothing to do with it.”
“This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved,” Mr. Trump wrote, in all capital letters.
The sentiment was echoed on social media by Vice President-elect JD Vance, a fervent critic of American foreign policy overreach.
Mr. Trump plans to nominate Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, as his director of national intelligence. She has spent years arguing that the United States has no business getting involved in Syria’s long-running civil war.
But analysts and former advisers said it would be difficult for Mr. Trump to remain a mere spectator as the country takes shape after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, especially amid growing fears that Syria might present new threats to the United States and its allies.
As president, Mr. Trump will be faced with important early decisions. One of them will be whether to establish diplomatic relations with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel force that now holds power in Damascus after a lightning offensive that toppled Mr. Assad. Some U.S. officials have said that the organization has shown pragmatism of late, understanding that while it can be a conservative Islamist group and enjoy broad support within Syria, it cannot rule the country as a terrorist organization.
That outreach would require a politically difficult reversal, given Mr. Trump’s bombastic talk about fighting terrorists and that it was his administration that officially designated the group as a terrorist organization in 2018. But engagement could also encourage the group to moderate and cooperate with U.S. interests.
Mr. Trump will also need to weigh the continued presence of about 900 U.S. troops in eastern Syria, a force long deployed there to contain the Islamic State. The terrorist group once controlled a large swath of territory in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, and U.S. officials fear it could exploit Mr. Assad’s fall to make new gains.
During his first administration, Mr. Trump vowed to pull American soldiers from Syria before eventually changing his mind. James Jeffrey, who served as Mr. Trump’s Syria envoy, said that Mr. Trump initially saw the force as an example of a needlessly broad American military footprint. He changed his mind, Mr. Jeffrey said, after advisers carefully explained the benefits of the troops, including as a check on Iranian influence.
“If you’re saying, ‘We’re going to stop having anything to do with Syria’ — I don’t think that’s his position,” Mr. Jeffrey said. “He was willing for us to have an active policy if he understood what we were doing.”
Fears of an ISIS resurgence could also complicate any hopes Mr. Trump has of withdrawing troops. Mr. Assad’s forces, which have now collapsed, played a role in keeping the terrorist group in check.
And the last thing Mr. Trump would want is an ISIS comeback. He often boasts that as president he oversaw an American-led military coalition, one he inherited from the Obama administration, that smashed ISIS’ self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
Mr. Trump will be inclined to use decisive force against any signs of an ISIS return, another former Trump national security official said.
Nor has Mr. Trump proved totally averse to using force in the country. As president, he ordered two separate airstrikes against Mr. Assad’s forces, in 2017 and 2018, to punish them for using chemical weapons against rebel fighters and civilians.
As he considers his approach, Mr. Trump will be lobbied by a cast of aides, advisers and foreign officials with a deep investment in Syria’s fate.
Ms. Gabbard is something of a wild card who illustrates the uncertainties around what Mr. Trump might do. In 2017, Ms. Gabbard traveled to Damascus, where she met with Mr. Assad and celebrated him as a bulwark against rebel groups populated by terrorists with ties to Al Qaeda and hatred for the United States.
Ms. Gabbard has long acknowledged that Mr. Assad, widely accused of mass murder and torture, was a “brutal dictator,” but she maintained that his control of Syria was the best chance of containing terrorist groups.
The recent events in Syria have validated her views, according to a person close to her.
Publicly, Ms. Gabbard has said relatively little about Syria, other than supporting Mr. Trump’s position in brief remarks to reporters on Monday.
But privately Ms. Gabbard has said the takeover of Syria by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is a troubling development, a view that Mr. Trump shares, according to the person close to her, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a pending nomination.
Ms. Gabbard’s allies have said that Mr. Trump believes in meeting with American adversaries, and that Republican senators she has met with in recent days have not dwelled on her visit with Mr. Assad.
But she is likely to face questions about her skepticism of the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Mr. Assad was responsible for the 2017 chemical weapons attack that prompted Mr. Trump’s first strike on Syria.
Mr. Trump will be lobbied by several other influential advisers and world leaders to help steer the new Syria in a positive direction.
His choice for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, has supported an active American role in Syria. As a presidential candidate in 2015, he called for the United States and its allies to impose no-fly zones over the country to protect civilians from Mr. Assad’s retribution.
Mr. Rubio also criticized Mr. Trump’s decision in 2019 to pull back American troops stationed along the Turkey-Syria border, effectively enabling a Turkish military offensive against Kurdish fighters who have been vital allies in the U.S. fight against ISIS. Turkey sees those Kurds as terrorists bent on carving an independent state out of Turkish territory. Mr. Rubio called the decision “a grave mistake.”
Mr. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, had a similar reaction. He said the American troops provided an important buffer between Turkish forces and their Kurdish enemies, “keeping everyone focused on keeping a lid on that Pandora’s box that is ISIS.”
“They can and will return,” Mr. Waltz said of ISIS in Syria. “They will attack America again. We have to stay on the offense.”
Several U.S. allies — including Israel, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — are also likely to appeal to Mr. Trump to get involved in Syria.
Israel will want U.S. help to ensure that Iran, an ally of Mr. Assad that smuggled weapons through Syria to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, cannot continue using the country as a supply route.
Turkey may press Mr. Trump to deal with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which it has supported for years. At the same time, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, may again pressure Mr. Trump to green-light attacks on Kurdish fighters.
Syria’s neighbors and European countries, which saw a destabilizing influx of refugees during the peak of Syria’s civil war about a decade ago, will also be looking for U.S. leadership to help ensure that any new spasms of violence do not produce new waves of migrants.
It could still be a hard sell. After Mr. Trump ordered the second of his two strikes against Syria, in 2018, he made clear that his goal was to deter the use of chemical weapons, not to influence the country’s tangled conflict.
“No amount of American blood or treasure can produce lasting peace and security in the Middle East,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s a troubled place. We will try to make it better, but it is a troubled place. The United States will be a partner and a friend, but the fate of the region lies in the hands of its own people.”
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