'This is not our fight': Trump says US should 'stay out of Syria' as Assad regime struggles to survive

US President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States should not get involved in the ongoing conflict in Syria. The proclamation from Trump reflected how the US foreign policy will look like after he takes over the Oval Office. In the span of a few weeks, rebel groups in Syria have taken control of several key cities with insurgents marching towards the country’s capital Damascus.

Amid the chaos, reports are also emerging that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has fled Syria. In light of the recent developments, Trump said that Washington should stay out of the conflict, calling Syria a “mess”. Trump’s remarks came shortly after National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that “US priorities in Syria now are to ensure the country’s conflict does not encourage a resurgence of the Islamic State militant group or lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Syria is a mess but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT,” Trump warned in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. Trump is currently in Paris where he attended the re-opening ceremony of Notre Dame and held a trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron.

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“THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he added. In the post, Trump pointed out that the Assad regime was bolstered by Russia, Iran and outside militias and hence, does not deserve the “American support”. He argued that Russia “seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria” because “they are so tied up in Ukraine.”

Trump supports rebel groups, hits out at Obama

In the Saturday post, the president-elect suggested that it might be for the best that the rebel groups topple the Assad government. Trump took out time to slam former US President Barack Obama’s 2013 decision to not launch airstrikes against Syria after Assad used “chemical weapons to kill his own people”.

It is pertinent to note that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the insurgency against the Assad regime is designated as a terror organisation in Syria. While HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, once commanded an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, he recently disavowed the group’s extremist roots and insisted that Syrian Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities would live safely under its rule, The Washington Post reported.

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While raising “spillover” concerns, Sullivan recalled how tensions in Syria, rattled the world in the past. “In previous phases of Syria’s long-running civil war, at its worst, we saw the explosion of ISIS onto the scene,” he said at a conference in Simi Valley, California run by the Reagan National Defense Forum. “The main priority is to ensure that the fighting in Syria does not lead to a resurgence of ISIS. We are going to take steps ourselves, directly and working with the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurds, to ensure that does not happen,” he added.

How Trump treated Syria when he was the president

In the first months of Trump’s first term, the US launched 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield, which was then considered the first direct American assault on the Assad government since that country’s civil war had begun. The Trump administration authorized the missile launch in retaliation for a 2017 chemical attack that killed scores of civilians.

In December 2018, the Republican firebrand ordered the withdrawal of 2,000 American troops from Syria, ending a military campaign that largely eliminated the Islamic State. In October 2019, he went on to order the withdrawal of American forces from northern Syria, effectively ceding Western influence in the country to Iran and Russia, which heavily supported the Assad regime.

With inputs from agencies.