U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sounded the alarm on Syria’s escalating instability, warning on Tuesday that the war-ravaged country may be only weeks away from another catastrophic civil war..
“It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks—not many months—away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up,” Rubio said in his address before the U.S. Senate.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia, where he announced the lifting of long-standing Assad-era sanctions. During the trip, he also met with Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new transitional president of Syria. President al-Sharaa was once on a U.S. travel ban list for connections with Jihadist terrorist organizations.
Rubio acknowledged the irony: “The transitional authority figures, they didn’t pass their background check with the FBI,” he quipped. Still, he defended engaging with the new leadership, stating, “If we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we did not engage them, it was guaranteed not to work out.”
