WATCH: Syria was close to ‘full-scale civil war’ if Trump hadn’t engaged with new regime, Rubio says

Описание: Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned a Senate committee Tuesday that Syria might have been close to a “full-scale civil war of epic proportions” if the Trump administration did not engage with the country’s new transitional government.

Rubio noted during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that members of Syria’s transitional government, formed earlier this year after dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed, have “got a tough history.” The former Florida senator and longtime Foreign Relations Committee member referenced the region’s destabilization after the Arab Spring uprisings that later turned Syria into a “playground for jihadist groups,” including the Islamic State.

But, the flip side is, “if we engage them, it may work out [or] it may not work out,” Rubio said. “If we did not engage them, it was guaranteed to not work out. In fact, it is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority – given the challenges they're facing – are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up.”

During his trip last week to the Middle East, President Donald Trump met with Syria’s interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa. The meeting was the first between the two countries’ leaders in a quarter-century.

One of the challenges Syria faces includes bringing the millions of people displaced by the Syrian civil war back to their homes, Rubio said. “We need to figure out how we can enable the transitional authority to create an environment where they come back home, where
they can come back to their homes, where they can help rebuild their economy,” he said.

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