President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US military should stay out of the escalating conflict in Syria as a shock opposition offensive closes in on the capital, declaring in a social media post, "THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.”
With world leaders watching the rapid rebel advance against Syria's Russian-and Iranian-backed president, Bashar Assad, President Joe Biden's national security adviser separately stressed that the Biden administration had no intention of intervening.
“The United States is not going to ... militarily dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war," Jake Sullivan told an audience in California.
He said the US would keep acting as necessary to keep the Islamic State — a violently anti-Western extremist group not known to be involved in the offensive but with sleeper cells in Syria's deserts — from exploiting openings presented by the fighting.
Insurgents' stunning march across Syria sped faster Saturday, reaching the gates of Damascus and government forces abandoning the central city of Homs. The government was forced to deny rumours that Assad had fled the country.
Trump's comments on the dramatic rebel push were his first since Syrian rebels launched their advance late last month. They came while he was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral.
In his post, Trump said Assad did not deserve US support to stay in power.
Assad's government has been propped up by the Russian and Iranian military, along with Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied militias, in a now 13-year-old war against opposition groups seeking his overthrow. The war, which began as a mostly peaceful uprising in 2011 against the Assad family's rule, has killed a half-million people, fractured Syria and drawn in a more than a half-dozen foreign militaries and militias.
The insurgents are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the US has designated as a terrorist group and says has links to al-Qaida, although the group has since broken ties with al-Qaida.
The insurgents have met little resistance so far from the Syrian army, the Russian and Iranian militaries or allied militias in the country.
The Biden administration says Syrian opposition forces' capture of government-held cities demonstrates just how diminished those countries are by wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon.
“Assad's backers — Iran, Russia and Hezbollah — have all been weakened and distracted," Sullivan said on Saturday at an annual gathering of national security officials, defence companies and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.
“None of them are prepared to provide the kind of support to Assad that they provided in the past,” he later added.
The US has about 900 troops in Syria, including US forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group.
Gen. Bryan Fenton, head of US Special Operations Command, said he would not want to speculate on how the upheaval in Syria would affect the US military's footprint in the country. “It's still too early to tell,” he said.
What would not change is the focus on disrupting IS operations in Syria and protecting US troops, Fenton said during a panel at the Reagan event.
Syrian opposition activists and regional officials have been watching closely for any indication from the incoming Trump administration, in particular on how the US would respond to the rebel advances against Assad.
Robert Wilkie, Trump's defence transition chief and a former secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said during the same panel that the collapse of the “murderous Assad regime” would be a major blow to Iran's power.
The United Nations' special envoy for Syria called Saturday for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition” in Syria.
In his post, Trump said Russia “is so tied up in Ukraine” that it “seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years”. He said rebels could possibly force Assad from power.
The president-elect condemned the overall US handling of the war but said the routing of Assad and Russian forces might be for the best.
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend. THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he wrote in Saturday's post.
An influential Syrian opposition activist in Washington, Mouaz Moustafa, interrupted a briefing to reporters to read Trump's post and appeared to choke up. He said Trump's declaration that the US should stay out of the fight was the best outcome that the the Syrians aligned against Assad could hope for.
Rebels have been freeing political detainees of the Assad government from prisons as they advance across Syria, taking cities. Moustafa pledged to reporters Saturday that opposition forces would be alert for any US detainees among them and do their utmost to protect them.
Moustafa said that includes Austin Tice, an American journalist missing for more than a decade and suspected to be held by Assad.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham renounced al-Qaida in 2016 and has worked to rebrand itself, including cracking down on some Islamic extremist groups and fighters in its territory and portraying itself as a protector of Christians and other religious minorities.
While the US and United Nations still designate it as a terrorist organisation, Trump's first administration told lawmakers that the US was no longer targeting the group's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani.