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“Syria is a mess, but it is not our friend. The United States should do nothing about it. This is not our fight. Let it continue. Don't interfere!” That's what President-elect Donald J. Trump It was posted, in capital letters, on X (formerly Twitter) on December 7 as the Assad regime was rapidly collapsing.
The brutal tyrant who ruled Syria for decades was ousted by rebel forces who launched a blitzkrieg-like offensive in which they seized Aleppo, Homs and other major cities and took control of the capital, Damascus.
President Trump is likely motivated by the goal of fulfilling his mandate to stop sending Americans to fight foreign wars, and his instincts are noble. Let God sort this one out It seems like a reasonable approach. America faces many of our own problems at this time, not least the swarms of unidentified drones flying over our vital military installations at home – a mystery that our government seems unable to solve. But here lies the dilemma that is sure to complicate Trump's foreign policy approach of “staying out of other people's fights.”
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Donald Trump (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images/File)
If left alone, Syria will likely turn into a terrorist state. It is a country run by terrorists and harboring terrorist groups. Another Afghanistan, in other words.
After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Syria is now run by a de facto terrorist organization, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham. Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham is the dominant rebel force that has led various disparate groups to organize the insurgency. UN Security Council Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham considers itself a terrorist group, and in 2015 unanimously adopted Resolution 2254, which calls on member states to “prevent and suppress terrorist acts specifically committed” by the Al-Nusra Front, the predecessor to Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham. As a result, member states are now obligated to comply with the sanctions regime imposed on HTS – asset freezes, travel bans, and arms embargoes. There is a reason why Syria has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism since December 1979.
Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, a former member of al-Qaeda with ties to ISIS, adhered to violent jihadist doctrine. The head of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and the de facto leader of Syria is Abu Muhammad al-Julani, who after the overthrow of Assad began to introduce himself under his legal name, Ahmed Hussein al-Shara.
The leader of the jihadist Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, inspects damage caused by an earthquake in the village of Basnaya in the rebel-held northwestern Syrian province of Idlib on the border with Turkey on February 7, 2023. (OMAR HAJ) Kaddour/AFP via Getty Images )
Al-Julani was given his marching orders in 2011 to bring a rebel group into Syria's civil war by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2014, ISIS, an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, burrowed itself into Syria, taking advantage of the civil war and declaring itself a caliphate. Al-Baghdadi is the serial killer who killed himself and three of his young children when he detonated his jacket while being chased by American commandos and their dogs in a tunnel in northwestern Syria as part of a special operation authorized by President Trump in October 2019.
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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon in a mosque in Mosul in 2014. (Al-Furqan Media/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
ISIS and Al Qaeda They are a group of beheaders who beheaded Jews and Christians and burned a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage. Al-Julani comes from this stock. He is an extremist militant, a designated terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head set by the US State Department. Just because he scored an exclusive interview with CNN, having polished his image, trimmed his beard, and donned Zelensky's olive-green uniform, does not make him a moderate.
On Wednesday, he claimed that Syria does not pose a threat to the world and called for the lifting of sanctions on Syria and the removal of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham from a list of terrorist organizations designated by the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom. Women's education, noting in an interview with the BBC that when he ruled Idlib, about 60% of women were attending university there.
But when asked if alcohol is allowed in Syria, his response was clear: “There are many things I have no right to talk about because they are legal issues.” He added, “The Syrian Committee of Legal Experts will write the constitution. It will decide. Any ruler or president must abide by the law.” The law he is talking about is likely an extreme version of Sharia law, an oppressive form of Islamic law usually imposed by Islamist groups, such as the Taliban.
A masked Islamic State terrorist holding an ISIS flag in 2015. (Photos from the History/Universal Images collection via Getty Images)
There are already reports of Christmas decorations being torn down and women being forced to wear hijabs.
President Trump is likely to engage with Syria for the same reasons as the US military Afghanistan in 2001 – To prevent the spread of terrorism. But his options are not limitless. He is likely to put pressure on Erdogan in Turkey, which is the main backer of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and sponsor of the Syrian National Army, another militia group that is part of the rebel coalition leading the anti-Assad rebellion.
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The opposition forces took control of Menagh Air Airport and the city of Tal Rifaat in the Aleppo countryside, on December 1, 2024, after clashes with the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian regime forces. (Rami Al-Sayed/Nour Photo via Getty Images)
But as the balance of power in the Middle East shifts away from Iran and toward Türkiye, Erdogan's ambitions are likely to grow. Having ruled Türkiye for more than 20 years, Erdogan's mission has been to return Turkey to the center of the world map and revive the country's Ottoman Empire past. He also wants to place religion in Muslim-majority Türkiye as the focus of Turkish identity “that will work to build a new civilization.”
Given its dominance in the region, Turkey, which already plays on both sides – the United States, NATO and Russia – is unlikely to be a cooperative partner of the United States, whose influence in the region has diminished during the Biden administration.
Doing nothing will lead to the emergence of a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East under Trump's watch. Deploying US forces to calm matters in Türkiye would violate his promise not to wage foreign wars. Either way, Trump will be blamed for what happened to Syria Under Biden's watch.
