JERUSALEM — The rapid-fire collapse of the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar Assad has engulfed the Biden administration in a new wave of criticism about its efforts to claim a win for the end of one of the most brutal regimes in the Middle East.
Questions abound about whether Biden’s foreign policy team had a significant blind spot in Syria, where roughly 900 U.S. troops and American military contractors operate in the northeastern part of the war-ravaged country.
Speaking from the White House on Sunday, President Biden seemed to claim a much-needed victory for his administration’s foreign policy, “Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East.”
“This is a direct result of the blows that Ukraine, Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense with unflagging support of the United States,” he said.
John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy and who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser, told Fox News Digital, “President Biden’s efforts to take credit for the fatal weakening of Iran and Hezbollah is, frankly speaking, unseemly.”
Islamic State threats
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wrote on X, “As to U.S. interests in Syria, there are over 50,000 ISIS prisoners primarily being held by the Kurdish forces who helped President Trump destroy the caliphate. These ISIS fighters planned and executed plots against the American homeland and our allies. A breakout and reestablishment of ISIS is a major threat to the U.S. and our friends. Obama and Biden got this wrong big time, requiring President Trump to clean up their mess.”
On Sunday it was announced that U.S. Central Command launched dozens of key strikes against ISIS in a move said to stop the terror group from taking advantage of the fluid situation in Syria.
Displaced Kurds leave a refugee camp in the north of Aleppo, Syria, Dec. 4, 2024. (Ugur Yildirim/DIA Images/Abaca/Sipa USA via AP Images)
The Syrian Kurds have faced slashing attacks from Turkey and pro-Turkey Syrian Sunni jihadi organizations, including the Islamic State, over the years.
Sinam Sherkany Mohamad, the representative of the Syrian Democratic Council mission in the United States, told Fox News Digital, “Defeating Assad was the goal of all Syrians, to build a pluralistic democratic system that guarantees the rights of all ethnic and religious components and diversity in Syria.”
An Islamic State terrorist (History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“ISIS is still present in the Syrian desert and has sleeper cells in northern and eastern Syria in addition to the prisons of ISIS fighters and the Al-Holl camp, all of which threaten our people, while warning the current situation could whet ISIS’s appetite to become active again,” Mohamad said.
Incoming freshman Rep. Abraham Hamadeh, R-Ariz., told Fox News Digital, “We cannot ignore the impact of President Biden’s weak leadership, which has eroded deterrence and encouraged our allies to hedge their bets. President Trump understood that arming the Kurds and working with them to dismantle ISIS was a critical success. The reward for standing with America should never be betrayal or abandonment.”
Hamadeh, whose parents are Syrian immigrants, added, “We must ensure Syrian Kurdish civilians are not caught in the crossfire and that they are integral to any peace process.”
Max Abrahms, a leading expert on counterterrorism and a tenured professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Fox News Digital, “It is also expected that ISIS will manifest as a non-trivial issue in the new Syria. It is on this issue where the Kurds and America have the most strategic overlap, as both regard ISIS as a serious threat. The more ISIS presents as a problem, the stronger the logic of maintaining American forces to work with the Syrian Democratic Forces.”
The U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces has been a key player in stopping the spread of ISIS in Syria.
