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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that America had two choices in Syria: “Choice one was to let the place fall apart into 18 different pieces: long-term civil war, instability, mass migration, a playground for terrorists, ISIS running all over the place, Iran getting back in – that was choice number one.”
Rubio continued: “Choice number two is to try to see if it was possible to work with these interim authorities and President al-Sharaa and with his team – guess what? We chose number two because it made sense.
“Now, is it going to be easy? No – is it going to be difficult? Absolutely. Is it going to have ups and downs and good and bad days? No doubt about it,” Rubio added.
“When this situation erupted in the Northeast of Syria, President Trump engaged personally, not once but twice, with al-Shraa, and he said, ‘Stop the fighting so that we can move the ISIS prisoners that are there.”
According to Rubio, thousands of ISIS protestors, who could have broken out and created havoc and chaos, needed to be moved: “Stop the fighting so that we can move these ISIS prisoners so that you can – we have more time to work on this integration, the integration of the Kurds into the national Syrian forces,” stated Rubio, noting that: “al-Sharaa did it.”
“Now, he’s kept his word to a point,” Rubio continued: “Obviously, he has to keep doing that, but that’s what we’ve been able to achieve – we’ve been able to get him to agree to do that, and that’s been important because we’ve been able to move those prisoners into Iraq and out of harm’s way so that we don’t have a massive jailbreak of 4,000 to 5,000 ISIS killers running crazy all over the place and threatening us all in the future.”
Rubio noted that it had given time to work on an integration agreement: “Which they have agreed to between the Kurds and the Syrian Authorities in Damascus,” however, “now, you have to implement that agreement,” Rubio said.
According to Rubio, it isn’t going to be easy to implement an agreement, because there are other agreements that they need to reach with the Druze, the Bedouins, the Alawites, with all the elements of a very diverse society in Syria.
“We think that outcome, as difficult as it has been, is far better than a Syria that would have been broken up into 18 pieces, with all kinds of fighting going on, all kinds of mass migration, so we’re very positive about that,” Rubio said.
Rubio continued: “We think it’s headed in a positive direction, even though it’s been tested – there’s been some days that have been very concerning,” but the US like the trajectory and have to keep on that trajectory.
In closing, Rubio added that they’ve got good agreements in place: “The key now is implementation, and we’ll be very involved in that regard.”
