Secretary of State John Kerry’s Syrian cease fire agreement with the Russians won’t lead to coordination between the United States and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, a State Department spokesman clarified Monday.
“To clarify: the arrangement announced last week makes no provision whatsoever for the U.S. and Russian to approve strikes by the Syrian regime, and this is not something we could ever envision doing,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a statement released after the press briefing.
That statement walked back Kirby’s initial description of the deal, which provides for the United States and Russia to create a Joint Implementation Center (JIC) that will coordinate attacks on jihadists in Syria in exchange for a “reduced” level of attacks on civilians by the Assad regime. Kirby said earlier in the day that the Assad regime would be allowed to carry out airstrikes on jihadist groups as well, but that the attacks would be approved on “a case-by-case basis.”
“[I]t won’t be unilaterally, without the visibility of the joint implementation center,” Kirby said. “The idea is to coordinate information [between] the U.S. and the Russians, coordinate information on targeting in advance of operations. And while we don’t have obviously any communication directly with Assad’s military, nor do we intend to, we know that the Russians have influence over what they do — considerable influence.”
That statement raised the possibility that, after years of calling for Assad to step down, President Obama’s administration had decided on indirect cooperation with the dictator’s military.
“The purpose of the JIC, if and when it is established, would be to coordinate action between the U.S. and Russia, not for any other party,” Kirby said in his follow-up statement.
