A State Department official testified Thursday morning that the administration was considering “some new” options to address Russia’s activity in Syria at the request of President Obama, some seven months after Secretary of State John Kerry warned of a “plan B” in the event that an agreed-upon diplomatic solution failed.
When pressed for an update about the State Department’s progress on “plan B” by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker, Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said Russia and Assad would face consequences for non-compliance, but didn’t specify the nature of those consequences or a mechanism for implementing them.
“The consequences, I think, to Russia, as well as to the [Assad] regime will begin to be felt as a result of ‘plan A’ not being implemented because of Russia’s actions,” he said. “Second, as I indicated, the president has asked all of the agencies to put forward options, some familiar, some new, that we are very actively reviewing. When we are able to work through these in the days ahead, we’ll have an opportunity to come back and talk about them in detail, but we’re in the process of doing that.”
Kerry said in February that the United States would know “in a month or two” if the Syrian government was serious about making a political transition amid the nation’s ongoing civil war. “Assad himself is going to have to make some decisions and to show that they’re serious. If there isn’t, there are certainly ‘plan B’ options that will have to be considered,” he told Corker’s committee.
In May, Kerry issued an August 1 deadline for Assad to act and warned of “repercussions” if the Syrian president failed. The day that the ultimatum passed, the U.S. government “outlined no change in its Syria policy,” the Associated Press reported.
The BBC reported Thursday that Russia would continue bombing rebel-held territory in Aleppo, as Kerry said the administration was “on the verge” of suspending talks with the Kremlin.
In February, Russian media quoted Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as saying a U.S. “plan B” for Syria “does not and will not exist.”
