Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers Tuesday that Syria may be weeks away from plunging into another civil war or collapsing altogether.
Rubio, who met with top Syrian officials last week during President Trump’s Middle East trip, said fears for the fledgling Damascus government were the main reason Trump abruptly opted to implement a 180-day waiver on sanctions last week following his meeting in Saudi Arabia with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks — not many months — away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“The lifting of the sanctions, its most immediate impact will be to allow neighboring countries to begin to assist the transitional authority to build governance mechanisms that allow them to actually establish government, unify the armed forces under one banner,” he added.
However, Rubio also cautioned that sanctions relief alone “won’t be enough” to stabilize Syria and suggested “there’s going to have to be something done congressionally or more comprehensively” to revive the beleaguered nation following more than 14 years of civil war.
Al-Sharaa led the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s toppling of the Assad regime last year — ending a dynasty that had ruled the former French colony since 1971.
Last week, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman helped organize a meeting between al-Sharaa and Trump, during which the US president implored the Syrian leader to sign on to the Abraham Accords recognizing Israel.
Al-Sharaa is a career militant who fought US troops as a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq in the early 2000s before founding the terrorist group’s Nusra Front affiliate in Syria in 2012.
Now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard condemned al-Sharaa during her confirmation hearing in January as “an Islamist extremist … who danced on the streets to celebrate the 9/11 attack.”
Al-Sharaa broke with al Qaeda’s leadership in 2016 and has sought to rebrand himself as a defender of Syria’s religious diversity, which includes Christians and Alawites, both of whom comprise more than 10% of the population, and Druze, who comprise about 3%.
“The bad news is that the transitional authority figures — they didn’t pass their background check with the FBI,” Rubio said Tuesday. “On the flip side of it, if we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we do not engage them, it was guaranteed to not work out.”
Rep. Martin Stutzman (R-Ind.), who visited Syria last month and met with al-Sharaa, told The Post last week that the new president is dead set on keeping Syria unified and praised him for having a Christian in his cabinet.
“He wants to keep Syria unified,” Stutzman explained. “Any effort to divide the country into regional parts or sectarian parts was not acceptable.”
Rubio also warned that if Syria collapses again, it could lead to chaos throughout the Middle East, and underscored how the country became a “playground, frankly, for jihadist groups like ISIS and others” after civil war erupted in March 2011.
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