Secretary of State John Kerry rejected the idea that withholding US support for rebels in Syria would advance ongoing multilateral talks aimed at stopping the civil war there.
Kerry claimed that fighting in Syria would continue, even if the US once again accepted the legitimacy of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“We didn’t create them out of whole cloth,” Kerry said of the rebels, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. He was asked by Rand Paul (R-Ky.) if continued militant opposition to Assad would be viable without Washington’s backing.
On Monday, the US and Russia announced that they had come to terms on a humanitarian ceasefire, which is scheduled to be implemented this Saturday. The fragile, short-term peace process is being supported by the Assad government and members of the opposition, and by international stakeholders on opposite sides of the conflict–including Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The deal deliberately excluded the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIL), Jabhat al-Nusra and organizations considered terrorist groups by the United Nations Security Council.
Fighting in Syria started in March 2011, amid popular uprisings that took place throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In August of that year, President Obama first openly called on Assad to step down.
Since the fighting began, the US has threatened to directly attack Assad’s forces—most notably in the summer of 2013, after a sarin attack in the suburbs of Damascus left hundreds of Syrian civilians dead. The Assad government and members of the opposition blamed each other for the mass killings. In 2014, the US launched airstrikes in Syria as part of an international campaign to dismantle ISIL.
On Tuesday, Kerry again refused to rule out the possibility of President Obama ordering attacks on the Assad government, in support of the rebels.
“Assad himself is going to have to make some real decisions about the formation of a transitional governance process that’s real,” he said. The United States and members of the Syrian opposition are demanding that Assad relinquishes power as part of any deal. “If there isn’t, as you’ve read in the newspapers and are probably hearing, there are certainly ‘Plan B’ options being considered.”
On Feb. 9, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius first reported the existence of “Plan B” after an interview with Kerry. “Although Kerry wouldn’t discuss specific military options in Syria, he did offer some broad outlines,” Ignatius wrote. Kerry told the columnist the contingency would target the Islamic State and bolster “opposition against Assad.”
Kerry’s claim, however, was met with skepticism. Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said he believes that neither the Syrian Government nor its Russian allies find “Plan B” to be credible, after President Obama decided against launching airstrikes in the wake of the 2013 gas attack.
“I think the Secretary is negotiating a situation where there is no ‘Plan B,’” Corker said. “Russia knows there will be no ‘Plan B.’”
Kerry rejected the notion, saying that a diplomatic solution was the President’s “first choice” (the sarin incident, for example, led to the negotiated destruction of Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpile). Kerry also warned that “this can get a lot uglier” without any kind of meaningful dialogue.
“Russia has to be sitting there evaluating that, too,” Kerry said, claiming that the war will, eventually, be brought to an end through negotiations. “It may be too late to keep it as a whole Syria, if we wait much longer,” he added.
Kerry also noted that the United States government should know “in a month or two” if Russian negotiators are “really serious.”
More than 270,000 Syrians have been killed and millions more have fled the country since the war began.
