President Trump says Syria is “not our fight.” It may not be so easy to continue going out.

Last weekend, as Donald Trump sat with world leaders in Paris and marveled at the restored Notre Dame Cathedral, armed Islamic fighters in Syria rode in jeeps to finally bring down Assad’s regime. He was heading to Damascus to finish the war.

At a moment when world news was broadcast on a split screen, the president-elect of the United States, sitting between France’s first couple, was still focused on the alarming developments in the Middle East.

“Syria is in chaos, but it is not our friend,” he posted on his Truth social network the same day.

He added: “The United States should not be involved in this. This is not our fight. Let it be. Don’t get involved!”

That post, and one the next day, served as a reminder of the president-elect’s strong mandate to not interfere in foreign policy.

It also raised big questions about what would happen next. Given the war’s involvement and impact on regional and global powers, can President Trump really “do nothing” with Syria now that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has collapsed?

Will President Trump withdraw US troops?

Will his policies be significantly different from President Biden’s, and if so, what’s the point in the White House doing anything in the five weeks before President Trump takes office?

The current government is engaged in frantic diplomacy in response to the collapse of the Assad regime and the rise of the Syrian Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization.

I’m writing this on Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s plane. He is shuttling back and forth between Jordan and Turkey, trying to get the region’s major Arab and Islamic countries to support a set of conditions that Washington is imposing to recognize the future Syrian regime. .

The United States says the country must be transparent and inclusive, not be a “base of terrorism,” cannot threaten Syria’s neighbors and eliminate its stockpile of chemical and biological weapons. It is argued that it must be done.

For Mike Walz, President Trump’s candidate for national security adviser (who has not yet been appointed), there is one guiding principle for his foreign policy.

“President Trump was elected with an overwhelming mandate to keep the United States out of further Middle East wars,” he told Fox News this week.

He also cited the Islamic State (IS), Israel, and “Gulf Arab allies” as America’s “core interests.”

Walz’s comments neatly summed up President Trump’s view of Syria as a small piece of a larger regional policy puzzle.

His goal is to ensure the containment of IS remnants and ensure that any future government in Damascus cannot threaten Israel, Washington’s most important regional ally.

President Trump is also focused on what he sees as the biggest prize, a historic diplomatic and trade deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which could further weaken and humiliate Iran. He thinks so.

Trump believes the rest is to resolve the “mess” in Syria.

President Trump’s rhetoric is reminiscent of how the president spoke about Syria during his first term, when he derided the country, which has an extraordinary cultural history dating back thousands of years, as a land of “sand and death.” .

Robert Ford, who served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014 and advocated for further U.S. intervention during his administration, said, “Donald Trump himself had little to do with Syria during his first administration. I don’t think I wanted to,” he said. In the form of support for the moderate Syrian opposition forces against President Assad’s brutal repression of the people.

“But there are people around him who are more concerned about counter-terrorism,” he told the BBC.

The United States currently has about 900 troops stationed in a 55-kilometer (34-mile) “deconfliction” zone east of the Euphrates River in Syria and the border between Iraq and Jordan.

Their official mission is to train and equip the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF – the Kurdish and Arab allies of the US that control the territory) against the IS group, which is currently heavily degraded in its desert camps. .

The SDF also guards camps housing IS fighters and their families.

In fact, the U.S. ground presence goes beyond this, helping to disrupt potential Iranian arms routes that were using Syria to supply its ally Hezbollah.

Ford, like other analysts, believes that while Trump’s isolationist instincts serve him well on social media, the realities on the ground and the views of his own team could ultimately temper his stance. That’s what I think.

Wael al-Zayat, a former U.S. State Department adviser for Syria, echoes this view.

“He’s trying to get serious people into his administration to run the Middle East,” he told the BBC, adding that his nominee for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio in particular, “is someone who’s serious about foreign policy.” There is,” he pointed out. ”.

These tensions between isolationist ideals and regional goals also emerged when President Trump withdrew remaining CIA funding from some “moderate” rebel groups and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria in 2019. , which culminated in the president’s first term.

At the time, Walz called the move a “strategic mistake,” and Trump’s own officials, fearing an Islamic State resurgence, partially reversed his decision.

Trump also fired 59 cruise missiles at Syrian airfields in 2017 after Assad allegedly ordered a chemical weapons attack that killed scores of civilians, and he advocated nonintervention. deviated from the ideal.

It also strengthened sanctions against the Syrian leadership.

Walz summed up the blurred lines of President Trump’s “It’s not our fight” promise.

“That doesn’t mean he’s never going to intervene,” he told Fox News.

“President Trump has no problem taking decisive action if the American homeland is threatened in any way.”

Adding to the potential for tensions is Tulsi Gabbard, another key Trump nominee for director of national intelligence. The controversial former Democrat-turned-Trump ally met with Assad on a “fact-finding” trip in 2017 and criticized then-President Trump’s policies.

Her nomination is likely to be heavily scrutinized by U.S. senators amid accusations (which she denies) of being an apologist for Assad and Russia.

Trump is not alone in his anxiety about continuing the mission in Syria and his desire to end it.

In January, three U.S. soldiers were killed at a U.S. military base in Jordan in a drone strike by Iranian-backed militias operating in Syria and Iraq, as the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip threatens to spread further into the region. did.

This attack and others continue to raise questions for the Biden administration over the level of U.S. forces and their exposure in the region.

In fact, many of the positions of the incoming Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration on Syria are more aligned than divergent.

Despite significant differences in tone and rhetoric, both leaders want Damascus to be run by a government that follows U.S. interests.

Both Biden and Trump want to further humiliate Iran and Russia in Syria.

President Trump’s “This is not our fight, let it unfold” echoes the Biden administration’s “This is a process that needs to be led by the Syrians, not the United States.”

But the “huge” difference, and what’s causing the most anxiety among Biden supporters, lies in President Trump’s approach to U.S. forces on the ground and U.S. support for the SDF, which helps rebels flee. said Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat based in Washington. Assad regime.

“Biden has more sympathy, connection and passion[for the Kurds]. Historically, he was the first senator to visit the Kurdish region (in northern Iraq) after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. He’s one of the members of Congress.”

“Trump and his people don’t really care… They’re considering not excluding allies, and they understand that, (but) the way they go about doing it is different.”

Barabandi said he supports President Trump’s non-interventionist rhetoric and believes the president-elect will “certainly” withdraw U.S. troops, but he will do so in a phased timeframe and with a clear plan. .

“We won’t have a situation like Afghanistan in 24 hours,” he said. “He will say a deadline for that and all the arrangements, within six months or whenever.”

Much is likely to revolve around a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is considered to have close ties to President Trump.

U.S. support for the SDF has long been a source of tension with Turkey, which considers the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the SDF’s military backbone, to be a terrorist organization.

Since the fall of Assad’s regime, Turkey has carried out airstrikes to dislodge Kurdish fighters from strategic areas, including the town of Manbij.

President Trump may want to strike a deal with his friends in Ankara that would allow for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, potentially further increasing Turkey’s involvement.

But the possibility that Turkish-backed groups could take control of some areas worries many, including former U.S. State Department Syria expert Wael al-Zayat.

“Different groups cannot run different regions of the country and control different resources,” he added.

“I think there is either a political process or a role for the United States to play, but I hope we avoid the latter scenario.”