At Hill Hearing, Rubio Warns of Possibility of New ‘Full-Scale Civil War’ in Syria

Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the Trump administration’s foreign policy agenda and defended government reforms from attacks by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. 

Broadly addressing the shake-up at both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Rubio said that the agencies were soliciting comments during a period of review, and that he would be sending an official congressional notification to Congress to discuss changes in the bureaucracy moving forward. 

But perhaps the most stunning statement Rubio made during the hearing was his warning that Syria could be close to breaking out into civil war again. 

“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,” he said.

The State Department chief received bipartisan praise for the lifting of sanctions on the new Syrian state, a move announced last week by President Donald Trump when he was in nearby Saudi Arabia. 

“The good news is that there is a Syrian national identity. It is one of the places in the Middle East where Alawites and Druze and Christians and Sunni and Shia have lived along with Kurds, have lived alongside each other, underneath the banner of a Syrian identity, until it was broken by a butcher, [since-ousted dictator Bashar] Assad, who pitted them against each other,” Rubio said. 

The secretary also defended the administration on charges that it’s too soft on Russia.

“I would also make this point, and it’s important … not one sanction has been lifted on the Russians. Every single sanction that was in place under the previous administration remains in place,” Rubio said.

He explained that the Trump administration was prioritizing trying to reach a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

“There is no military solution to this crisis,” Rubio said.

“And the fundamental challenge we have in Ukraine is this: Russia wants what they do not currently have and are not entitled to, and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily,” he said.

Rubio emphasized that the money and time the U.S. spends on dealing with the Russia-Ukraine war are resources that the U.S. is not spending to counter a conflict in the Indo-Pacific. 

The committee also sought to discuss the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has been criticized in recent years for its promotion of abortion. Eighty-five percent “of PEPFAR is functioning right now,” Rubio said, noting that he had made reforms to the program by reducing about 15 percent of the individual parts of the program. 

On the issue of Iran, the secretary clarified that Trump would never let Tehran obtain nuclear weapons on his watch. 

“The president has been very clear, and I won’t elaborate any further, that they are never going to get a nuclear weapon,” Rubio told the committee.

The secretary said the State Department’s assessment was that the regime in Tehran wanted nuclear enrichment as a deterrent. He expressed the desire for the Trump administration to negotiate a deal with the Iranians.

“Our hope is that we can encourage them to show them a path towards prosperity and peace,” Rubio said.

When it came to perhaps the U.S.’s greatest strategic adversary, the Chinese Communist Party, Rubio expressed frustration that the Chinese had so effectively captured control of rare earth metals from countries around the world. 

“So, where’s the connection between the aid we give to help countries survive and the fact that the Chinese are going in and somehow from these governments, bribery or otherwise, getting a hold of all these rare earth minerals and leases and contracts all over the place, not just in Africa, in Latin America, all over the place,” Rubio told the committee.

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