Dozens of US diplomats urge military strikes against Syria’s Assad

Saudi minister and US diplomats call for "robust" action on Syria.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir speaking at a press conference at the Saudi Embassy in Washington June 17, 2016.Kevin Lamarque/ REUTERS

WASHINGTON// Saudi Arabia on Friday reiterated its call for air strikes against Bashar Al Assad’s regime in Syria, after US diplomats broke ranks with the White House to push for robust action.

“If the Assad regime feels that it can continue in a stalemate, much less prevail, there will be no incentive for them to take the necessary steps to bring about a transition in Syria,” Saudi foreign minister Adel Al Jubeir told a news briefing during a Washington.

Among the measures proposed by Mr Al Jubeir were imposing a no-fly zone and arming rebels with surface-to-air missiles.

Mr Al Jubeir spoke as the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held talks with US president Barack Obama at the White House. The United States and Saudi Arabia are key backers of Syrian opposition groups seeking to remove Mr Al Assad, who is supported by Russia and Iran.

Saudi officials have long been discreetly critical of Mr Obama’s cautious approach to the five-year-old conflict in Syria.

But Mr Al Jubeir was speaking after the US state department was forced to confirm that many of its own diplomats had signed a cable on a “dissident channel” calling for more robust action in Syria.

Mr Obama is reluctant to see US forces drawn into another Middle East conflict, and many in Washington are concerned that weapons sent to the rebels fighting the Assad regime could get into the hands of extremists.

A five-year civil war in the country has killed more than 280,000 people, forced millions to flee abroad and allowed extremist groups such as ISIL and a Syrian branch of Al Qaeda to establish control in parts the country.

A ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia that took effect earlier this year has unravelled as simultaneous UN-backed peace talks in Geneva broke down over the issue of a political transition in Syria.

In a sign of growing frustration with the US policy in Syria, more than 50 state department diplomats signed a sharply critical internal memo calling for military strikes against the Assad regime to stop its persistent violations of the ceasefire.

The “dissent channel cable” was signed by 51 mid- to high-level officers involved with advising on Syria policy. It was reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The cable calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian government in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year, the newspaper reported, quoting copies of the cable.

Military strikes against the Assad government would represent a major change in the Obama administration’s long-standing policy of not intervening directly in the Syrian civil war, even as it has called for a political transition in which Mr Al Assad would leave power.

One US official, who did not sign the cable but has read it, said the White House remained opposed to greater American military involvement in the Syrian conflict.

The official said the cable was unlikely to alter that, or shift president Barack Obama’s focus from the battle against the persistent and spreading threat posed by the ISIL group.

A second source who had read the cable said it reflected the views of US officials who have worked on Syria, some of them for years, and who believe the current policy is ineffective.

“In a nutshell, the group would like to see a military option put forward to put some pressure ... on the regime,” said the second source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

While dissent cables are not unusual, the number of signatures on the document is large.

“That is an astonishingly high number,” said Robert Ford, who resigned in 2014 as US ambassador to Syria over policy disagreements, and is now at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.

“For the last four years, the working level at the state department has been urging that there be more pressure on Bashar Al Assad’s government to move to a negotiated solution” to Syria’s civil war, he said.

Mr Ford noted that this was not the first time the state department has argued for a more activist Syria policy. In the summer of 2012, the then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, proposed arming and training anti-Assad rebels. The plan, which had backing from other cabinet officials, was rejected by Mr Obama and his White House aides.

The dissenting cable discussed the possibility of air strikes but made no mention of adding US ground troops to Syria.

The US has about 300 special operations forces in Syria carrying out a counter-terrorism mission against ISIL but not targeting the Assad government.

“We are aware of a dissent channel cable written by a group of state department employees regarding the situation in Syria,” state department spokesman John Kirby said in an email. “We are reviewing the cable now, which came up very recently, and I am not going to comment on the contents.”

Mr Kirby said the “dissent channel” was an official forum that allowed state department employees to express alternative views.

Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan told a congressional hearing on Thursday that Mr Al Assad was in a stronger position than he was a year ago, bolstered by Russian air strikes against the moderate opposition.

Mr Brennan also said ISIL “terrorism capacity and global reach” had not been reduced.

The names on the memo are almost all midlevel officials — many of them career diplomats — who have been involved in the administration's Syria policy over the past five years, at home or abroad, the New York Times said.

* Reuters and Agence France-Presse