US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for the support of the transitional authorities of Syria, warning that the country could only be a few weeks of “potential collapse and a large -scale civil war of epic proportions”.
During a hearing of the senior foreign relations committee, he defended President Donald Trump’s decision last week to raise sanctions against Syria before meeting President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda commander who directed the rebel offensive who overthrew Bashar al-Assad in December.
Trump’s justification was that other countries wanted to help Sharaa administration and send help but were afraid of sanctions, said Rubio.
There was no immediate comments from Syrian officials.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Syria in response to atrocities committed by forces faithful to Assad during the country’s 13-year-old civil war, in which more than 600,000 people were killed and 12 million others were forced from their home.
The State Department had previously insisted on several conditions fulfilled before being lifted, in particular by protecting religious and ethnic minorities.
Although Sharaa has promised to do so, the country has been shaken by two waves of fatal sectarian violence in recent months.
In March, nearly 900 civilians, mainly members of the Assad Alawite sect, were killed by pro-government forces in the western coastal region during fighting between the security forces and the former loyalists of the regime, according to a surveillance group. The loyalists would have killed nearly 450 civilians and 170 members of the security staff.
And at the beginning of May, more than 100 people were said to have been killed in clashes between armed men from the Druze religious minority, new security forces and Sunni Islamist combatants allied in two suburbs of the capital Damascus and the southern province.
Even before violence, many members of the minority communities were concerned about the new transitional authorities, which are dominated by the Sunni Islamist group of Sharaa, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS). He is a former affiliate of Al-Qaeda always designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, the United States, the EU and the United Kingdom.
Sharaa himself also continues to be registered by the United States as a “specially designated global terrorist”, although the Biden administration announced in December that the United States would remove the bonus of $ 10 million (7.5 million pounds sterling) offered for its arrest.
Despite Sharaa’s past, Trump took the opportunity to meet him while attending a summit of Gulf leaders in Saudi Arabia last week.
Subsequently, the American president told journalists that he was an “attractive young guy”, adding: “A hard guy. Past strong. Past very strong. Fighter.”
“He had a real chance to bring him together (Syria),” he said, adding, “it is a torn country”.
Sharaa declared Trump’s decision to lift the sanctions against Syria “was a historic and courageous decision, which attenuates the suffering of the people, contributes to their rebirth and throws the foundations of stability in the region”.
Addressing the senatorial committee of foreign relations in Washington DC on Tuesday, Rubio joked that “the bad news is that the figures of the transitional authority … did not succeed their verification of the history of the FBI”.
“But on the other hand, if we engage them, this can work, it may not work. If we do not hire them, it was guaranteed not to work,” he added.
“In fact, it is our evaluation that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they face, are perhaps weeks, not several months, far from the potential collapse and a large-scale civil war with epic proportions, fundamentally the country separating.”
He did not develop but declared that the minorities of Syria “took care of a deep internal distrust … because Assad deliberately opposed these groups”.
He said the Trump had decided to quickly raise the sanctions because “the nations in the region wanted to get help, want to start helping them. And they can’t because they are afraid of our sanctions.”
While Rubio spoke, the European Union’s foreign ministers agreed to also raise economic sanctions against Syria.
“We want to help the Syrian people rebuild a new inclusive and peaceful Syria,” wrote the head of foreign policy of the Kaja Kallas Bloc on X.
“The EU has always been supported by the Syrians in the past 14 years – and will continue to do so.”
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the decision marked “the start of a new chapter in Syrian-European relations based on shared prosperity and mutual respect”.
