President Joe Biden is blowing a fleeting U.S. opportunity to shape the direction of post-Bashar al-Assad Syria in the U.S. national interest.
Assad was responsible for the mass starvation of and repeated chemical weapons attacks against the Syrian people. His regime killed many hundreds of thousands between 2011 and 2024. Assad was also a close ally of Iran, allowing Tehran to move increasingly potent weapons through Iraq, then Syria, and finally into the hands of the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran’s own forces in southern Syria. Similarly relying on Vladimir Putin to militarily intervene in his support in 2015, Assad then provided Putin with unprecedented military freedom of movement from Syria. This earned Putin significant strategic dividends across the Middle East at a cost to American interests.
