(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress on Tuesday that the US assesses the new al-Qaeda-linked Syrian government could collapse within weeks and that the country could descend into “full-scale civil war.”
Rubio made the comments at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, where he explained the administration’s rationale for engaging with Syria’s new de facto leaders, who the US helped put in power, despite their al-Qaeda roots.
Rubio recently met with Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, Syria’s new foreign minister, in Turkey. According to Turkish media reports, Shibani was a founding member of the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate that eventually rebranded into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that led the offensive against former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and took power in Damascus in December 2024.
“The bad news is that the transitional authority figures, they didn’t pass their background check with the FBI. They’ve got a tough history and one that we understand,” Rubio said.
“If we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we did not engage them, it was guaranteed that it would not work out,” he added. “In fact, it was our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse.”
Rubio said that a collapse would lead to “a full-scale civil war of epic proportions. Basically, the country splitting up.”
Rubio’s testimony came after President Trump announced he planned to lift sanctions on Syria and met with the country’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who was the leader of the al-Nusra Front and later HTS.
A civil war does appear to be brewing in Syria as HTS-affiliated jihadists have carried out massacres of Alawite civilians in western Syria and have also been clashing with Druze fighters around Damascus. In recent days, government forces have also launched raids against ISIS.
Syria has also faced heavy airstrikes from Israel since the regime change, and the Israeli military has invaded and seized territory in southern Syria. Sharaa has signaled that he’s willing to normalize relations with Syria to obtain sanctions relief from the US, but Israel appears more interested in continuing its occupation and bombing campaign in the country.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
