JERUSALEM – The rapid fall of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian dictatorship has engulfed the Biden administration in a new wave of criticism over its efforts to claim victory at the end of one of the Middle East’s most brutal regimes.
Questions abound about whether Biden’s foreign policy team has a significant blind spot in Syria. There, about 900 U.S. troops and American military contractors operate in the northeastern part of the war-torn country.
Speaking from the White House on Sunday, President Biden appeared to claim a much-needed victory over his administration’s foreign policy, saying “our approach has changed the balance of power in the Middle East.”
“This is a direct result of the blow that Ukraine is Ukraine, and Israel conveyed their own self-defense with surprising support to the United States,” he said.
John Hanna, a senior fellow at the National Security Institute’s Center for Defense Strategy and former national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, told Fox News Digital, “This is a fatal weakening of President Biden. The effort to praise Iran and Hezbollah is, frankly, a bad look.”
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad flees into exile as Muslim rebels conquer country
Topshot – Photo taken on December 3, 2024 at the entrance to the Khweiris military airfield in eastern Aleppo province shows a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the national flag on a garbage dump after the takeover of the area is shown. by rebel groups. The War Monitor on December 1 said that Ankara-backed groups had seized control of the towns of Sakhre and Qanassar, southeast of Aleppo, from government forces and also appeared at the Kweilis military airport. (Photo by Rami al Sayeed/AFP via Getty Images)
“The harsh reality is that if Israel had succumbed to pressure from the Biden administration and followed its advice in the past 14 months of war, Iran and Hezbollah would have been much stronger and Israel much weaker than they are today,” Hanna said. Said. Served in the Clinton administration.
“There is no doubt that President Biden deserves much of the credit for his modest support for Israel’s ability to defend itself against the multifaceted war that Iran and its proxies launched on October 7, 2023.” he continued. “But what he has refused to do is provide Israel with the ability to actually win that war by inflicting a comprehensive defeat on its enemies, especially Iran and Hezbollah, and the ability to win the war in the same way.” It was.
President Biden delivers remarks on the latest developments in Syria at the White House on December 8, 2024 (Pete Marovich/Getty Images)
“The collapse of the Syrian regime is a direct result of the severe blows we have inflicted on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters at a press conference on Monday. “I want to be clear: challenges are still expected in the campaign and our hands are stretched.”
He also expressed gratitude to President Donald Trump for recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights in 2019.
“The Golan will forever be an inseparable part of Israel,” he said, according to Israeli news agency TPS-IL.
WASHINGTON DC – JULY 25: US President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House Oval Office on July 25, 2024 in Washington DC. Netanyahu’s visit comes as the Israel-Hamas war reaches nearly 10 months. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad’s fall is a strategic blow to Iran and Russia, experts say
Fox News Digital reports that since Hamas terrorists in Gaza slaughtered nearly 1,200 people, including more than 40 Americans, in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the Biden administration has announced that the reports that they have tried to reduce their efforts. Lebanese terrorists and do not launch counter-strike against Iranian regime.
Rebel forces in northwest Syria seized military vehicles belonging to the regime along the route to Kweris Airport on December 2, 2024. (Rami alsayed/Nurphoto via Aprami Alsayed/Nurphoto via AP)
After Biden’s speech, senior administration officials appeared to mirror the president’s bravery. In the Middle East, we saw it play here last week. ”
Ben Ben Taleburu, an expert on Iran and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said: “With all due respect, it’s a little strange to have a regime, and with the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and its Islamic Republic of Iran… Some patrons try to praise the fall of the Assad regime.”
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, left, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Office of the Supreme Leader of Iran via AP/File)
“It defines Biden’s risk-averse approach to the region, if not more,” he continued. “Over the past year, the administration has seen the Israeli box in Iranian-backed threat networks in the region, making a breaking taboo that has long hampered Washington’s regional policy.”
obama brewing failure
Democratic politicians like former Secretary of State John Kerry and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Assad before using chemical weapons on the population after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Assad, “On the contrary, these visits convince the Assad regime that there will be no consequences for actions in support of terrorists.”
Dictators and radical Islamist movements in the Middle East are troubling the Biden and Obama administrations, experts say.
An Afghan climbs on top of a plane at Kabul airport on August 16, 2021, fleeing the country before the Taliban return to seize power after the withdrawal of US troops. (Getty Images)
The Biden-Harris administration faced congressional criticism in 2021 for its premature and failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, which resulted in the creation of a radical Islamist Taliban movement that absorbed state and U.S. weapons.
Trump urges us to stay in Syrian civil war, blames Obama for failure as Muslims move closer to capital
Islamic State threat
Sen. Lindsey Graham (Rs.C.) wrote to X: To America’s homeland and our allies.
On Sunday, it was announced that US Central Command had launched dozens of significant strikes against ISIS in a move said to stop the terrorist group from exploiting Syria’s fluid situation.
Displaced Kurds leave a refugee camp north of Aleppo, Syria, December 4, 2024. (Image via ugur yildirim/dia images/abaca/sipa USA)
Syria’s Kurds have faced slashing attacks from Turkey and miscellaneous Syrian Sunni jihad groups, including the Islamic State, for years.
Sinam Sharkani Mohammad, head of the U.S. mission to Syria’s Democratic Council, told Fox News Digital: In Syria. ”
islamic state terrorist (History/Universal Image Group via Getty Images)
“ISIS is still present in the Syrian desert and has sleeper cells in northern and eastern Syria that threaten our people, in addition to ISIS fighters and prisons in al-Hol camp, but currently “The situation may demand ISIS’s appetite to operate again,” Mohammad said.
R-Ariz. freshman Congressman Abraham Hamadeh told Fox News Digital. “We cannot ignore the impact of President Biden’s weak leadership. Working with them to dismantle ISIS should not have been a reward for standing with America.
Hamadeh, whose parents are Syrian immigrants, added: “We must ensure that Syrian Kurdish civilians are not caught in the crossfire and are integral to the peace process.”
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Max Abrams, a leading counterterrorism expert and political science professor at Northeastern University, told Fox News Digital: The Kurds and the US have the most strategic overlap, as the more they view ISIS as a serious threat, the more they present the logic of working with democratic forces in Syria to maintain American forces. ”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US, was a key player in stopping the spread of ISIS in Syria.
