REX TILLERSON: 'THE REIGN OF THE ASSAD FAMILY IS COMING TO AN END' Created: 26 October 2017
Iran
NCRI
Terrorism
Iraq
Syria

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Syrian President Bashar Assad's future would "be decided by the Syrian people." (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
BY: Joel Gehrke
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s days in power remain numbered despite his support from Russia and Iran, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.“The reign of the Assad family is coming to an end, and the only issue is how should that be brought about,” Tillerson told reporters in Switzerland.That’s sharp difference in tone from a March trip to the Middle East,
when Tillerson told reporters in Turkey that Assad’s future would "be decided by the Syrian people." Tillerson’s latest denunciation of Assad came just days after the liberation of the Islamic State’s capital in Syria.“With ISIS on the brink of defeat, we continue our efforts to de-escalate the violence in Syria and support the Geneva process called for under [a UN Security Council Resolution] to allow the Syrian people to chart a new political course,” Tillerson told reporters. “As we’ve said many times before, the United States wants a whole and unified Syria with no role for Bashar al-Assad in the government.”
Trump’s team has been criticized by several lawmakers for failing to develop a strategy for counteracting Russian and Iranian influence in Syria. Those lawmakers say the administration focused on the defeat of ISIS, only to allow Iran to gain strategically-significant territory that allows the pariah regime to enhance its terrorist networks.
“It needs to be a focus and [it’s] something that has to be addressed sooner than later, but I don’t know that it’s risen to the level of top-five international policy concerns," Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a Foreign Affairs Committee member and Freedom Caucus chairman who works closely with the White House told the Washington Examiner.
illerson’s remarks suggested that might be changing. He spent the last several days meeting with leaders from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Qatar, Iraq, Pakistan, and India. That flurry of meetings covered a range of issues, but at the broadest level they focused on stabilizing and strengthening U.S. alliances in the Middle East and the Pacific Rim.

His efforts to foster a friendship between Iraq and Saudi Arabia are designed in part to counter Iran’s influence in Iraq, and Tillerson was similarly dismissive of the regime’s role in Syria.

“I see Iran as a hanger-on,” Tillerson said. “In terms of Iran’s future influence in Syria, again, I think that will ultimately emerge from the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254, through the new constitution, the elections, and whatnot.”

Iran and Assad might be expected to move in concert, given that Iranian forces and militias have joined Russia in provided critical support to Assad in power. Those military gains have been designed in part to allow Assad to dominate whatever political process ensued at the end of the fighting.

But Tillerson expressed confidence in the final outcome.

“The only thing that changed is when this administration came into office, we took a view that it is not a prerequisite that Assad go before that process starts, rather the mechanism by which Assad departs will likely emerge from that process,” he said.

originally published on the washingtonexaminer