US told Assad it would pull troops from northeast Syria if he closed Iran's supply lines: Report
The US told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that it was willing to withdraw American soldiers from northeast Syria and reduce sanctions in return for him shutting down Iranian arms supply lines.
The US was working with Israel and the United Arab Emirates to make the offer to Assad, according to a report published by The New York Times on Wednesday.
The report provides few details, such as who delivered the messages to Assad and how the US and Israel envisioned the Syrian leader would remove Iran from his country.
Assad relies heavily on Russian air support and Iranian ground troops, mainly in the form of Shia militias and Hezbollah, to remain in power.
Russia and Iran helped Assad wrest back control of much of Syria from opposition rebels, including those backed by Gulf states, roughly a decade ago.
Assad’s tenuous grip on Syria has been seriously threatened since last week when Ha'yat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Salafist rebel group based in northwestern Syria, and other militias backed by Turkey called the Syrian National Army launched a surprise offensive.
They swept through Assad’s front lines, taking Syria’s second city of Aleppo, and are now engaged in bitter fighting with Assad’s troops in Hama.
According to the report, the offers to Assad came before the HTS offensive.
The offers included promises of Gulf economic aid and plans to reduce US sanctions against Damascus.
The most debilitating sanctions on Assad were imposed by the US in 2020 under the Caesar Act, named for a Syrian military photographer who smuggled tens of thousands of gruesome photos out of the country which documented evidence of war crimes.
The Caesar Act is set to expire in December and needs to be renewed by Congress. Diplomats and analysts have speculated for months that the Biden administration was quietly trying to prevent the Act from being renewed, but there is strong bipartisan support for it in Congress.
Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, previously told Middle East Eye that "we'd be seeing more Gulf state investments now if the sanctions weren't there”.
Up until recently, Assad was generally seen as stable in power, protected by Shia militias and Russian air power. But his economy has been in shambles, with the UN saying about 90 percent of Syria's population is below the poverty line and billions of dollars in reconstruction necessary.
The HTS offensive has upended those calculations, and Assad is now seen as vulnerable. According to the NYT report, some regional diplomats have said that Israel’s regular bombardment of Iranian targets in Syria risks weakening Assad further, making a deal unlikely.
It’s unclear whether the Biden administration could cut any deal with Assad now, with Biden’s presidential term ending on 20 January 2025.
On Tuesday, the US conducted strikes in eastern Syria. The Pentagon said the strikes in Deir Ezzor hit three truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers, a T-64 tank and mortars, which they say posed a threat to US soldiers.
Syria has been carved up into competing zones of influence by Turkey, Russia, Iran, and the US. The Americans hold a wide swath of Syrian territory with their Kurdish-led allies, the Syrian Democratic Forces. The US controls about one-third of Syria.
US troops arrived in northeast Syria in 2015 as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. Working alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-majority militia, they pushed back the Islamic State group after it swept through vast swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
The so-called "caliphate" was territorially defeated in 2019, but around 900 US troops remain in Syria.