Syrian President Bashar Assad is still in office, years after President Obama insisted he had to go, keeping a brake on U.S. efforts to thwart the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria there, just as U.S. troops have finally begun to set up sites to train moderate rebels.
As a new round of peace talks began this week in Moscow, Assad felt confident enough to call for the U.S.-led coalition to cooperate with his country against the Islamic State in an interview with Foreign Affairs Managing Editor Jonathan Tepperman published Monday.
“We’ve been talking about or asking for international cooperation against terrorism for 30 years. But this potential needs will,” Assad said.
“The question that we have is, how much will does the United States have to really fight terrorism on the ground? So far, we haven’t seen anything concrete in spite of the attacks on ISIS in northern Syria. There’s nothing concrete. What we’ve seen so far is just, let’s say, window dressing, nothing real. Since the beginning of these attacks, ISIS has gained more land in Syria and Iraq.”
The administration has refused any cooperation with the Assad regime, but also has not taken any action against him, insisting that there is no military solution to his rule. That has irked Syrian opposition leaders whose forces will be needed to defeat the Islamic State, as well as their supporters in Congress.
“It is obvious that President Obama currently has no coherent strategy to achieve his stated goal to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ [the Islamic State],” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said Monday.
“Such a strategy must include taking an unambiguous stance against Assad’s rule, establishing a no-fly zone to protect civilians and provide cover to our allies on the ground, moving quickly to provide robust support to moderate units of the Free Syrian Army, and embedding additional United States special operations forces and advisers with our partners on the ground.
“Until such actions are taken, [the Islamic State] will continue to grow and pose an even greater danger to our national security interests,” the Arizona Republican said.
Indeed, the U.S. strategy in Syria appeared to be on the verge of collapse until a series of positive developments over the past month, culminating in news Monday that Kurdish forces had evicted Islamic State fighters from the disputed town of Kobani near the Turkish border and protected an important border crossing from capture.
“While the fight against [the Islamic State] is far from over, [the Islamic State’s] failure in Kobani has denied them one of their strategic objectives,” U.S. Central Command officials said in celebrating the event.
The news came as the Pentagon announced Friday that several hundred U.S. troops would soon arrive to set up training camps for moderate Syrian guerrillas in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, with an eye toward beginning the long-awaited training process in the spring. Meanwhile, the opposition’s newly-elected leader, Khaled Khoja, was in Syria Monday meeting with Free Syrian Army forces in the northern port city of Latakia.
But concerns still remain, primarily over the idea that the administration’s reluctance to confront Assad is tied to its desire for a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Iran, along with Russia, is Assad’s principal remaining international patron, and many observers believe the Obama administration is letting Tehran take the lead in easing him out.
“Today, the Assad regime’s military is essentially an auxiliary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” Syrian opposition spokesman Oubai Shahbandar said recently, noting that if Washington were considering a partnership with Iran against the Islamic State, “you’d be pouring jet fuel on the fire of extremism in Syria and Iraq today.”
