Following the fall of the Bashar Assad regime, the Biden administration is trying to strike a careful balance — Syrian people to chart their course, vowing to protect American interests and prevent a permanent power vacuum from building up in the country.
Speaking on Monday about Assad’s ouster, Secretary of State Antony Blinken struck an optimistic tone, saying the historic moment carried “significant risks” but vowing that the US was working to avert them.
“The Syrian people must have their own path, choose their own future. Senior officials from this department are being deployed across the region as we speak, working on how the United States can help the Syrian people as they decide their own path to the future,” he said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with Civil Society on the sidelines of the 31st Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Summit in Ta’Qali, Malta, on December 5, 2024.
Alberto Pizzoli/Pool via AP
But in addition to protecting the Syrian people, those officials are also pushing the administration’s agenda, including working to gather information on Austin Tice, a former US Marine and freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Syria 12 years ago.
Roger Carstens, the Biden administration’s chief hostage negotiator, went to Lebanon after Assad was ousted, according to a State Department official.
A senior administration official said one of the reasons Carstens traveled to the country was to intercept an unconfirmed report from signals intelligence that Tice was in the Syrian capital.
Rebel fighters hold weapons in the Aleppo Citadel after Syrian rebels announced they had toppled Bashar al-Assad, in Aleppo, Syria, on December 9, 2024.
Karam Al-Masri/Reuters
As the U.S. tries to turn the chaos in Syria into an opportunity to gather more information about Tice, the Biden administration is also trying to avoid using the incident to trigger an ISIS resurgence — something Blinken said the group would certainly try.
On Sunday, the US military began a series of punitive airstrikes against ISIS militants. Pentagon officials described the strikes as a precautionary measure to prevent the group from regrouping in Syria and indicated that more strikes were likely.
Another concern raised by the demise of the Assad regime is the stockpiles of chemical weapons it may leave behind in the country. Although the Obama administration signed an agreement with Russia, an ally of Assad, to destroy the banned munitions, this agreement was not fully implemented and efforts to inspect the remaining arsenals were unsuccessful.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is seen at the signing of the comprehensive long-term strategic cooperation program between Iran and Syria on May 3, 2023, in Damascus, Syria.
Borna News/Matin Ghasemi/Aksonline ATPImages/Getty Images
US officials fear that stockpiles of the components needed to create those chemical weapons, if not the weapons themselves, remain in Syria and could fall into the hands of bad actors.
Israel’s military said it had carried out strikes on suspected chemical weapons and missile sites in recent days, but the full picture of where those stockpiles may be inside Syria remains murky.
While the Biden administration celebrated the end of Assad’s rule, concern over who will rule Syria next is palpable.
US officials fear that the absence of a central authority in Syria could lead to a protracted post-revolutionary crisis similar to the political and humanitarian crises still unfolding in Libya and Sudan.
But they have doubts about the group that led the rebel coalition that defeated Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which emerged from an al-Qaeda affiliate and was classified as a terrorist organization by the US.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has tried to distance itself from its jihadist roots, but Biden administration officials have expressed skepticism — fearing the group will return to its old ways once in power.
In a speech on Sunday, President Joe Biden indicated that the United States was unlikely to reconsider its position on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the near future.
“As they take more responsibility, we will value not only their words, but also their actions,” he said.
Rebel fighters are seen holding a Syrian opposition flag at the Umayyad Mosque after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, on December 9, 2024.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
But as Washington undergoes its transition of power, it is unclear which of the Biden administration’s priorities for Syria will be the Trump administration’s.
“Syria is a mess, but it is not our friend, AND THE UNITED STATES HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS,” President-elect Donald Trump said in a speech on Saturday.
“Trump’s stated goal is to stay out of the conflict in Syria, but many US allies have pressing interests at stake in Syria, and their potential to metastasize problems in Syria is high,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program. Center for Strategic and International Studies and former State Department official.
“There is no doubt that this situation will evolve over many months,” he said. “And while the decisions made now are important, the consequences of most of those decisions won’t be clear until well into the Trump administration.”
