The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's Next Foreign Policy Challenge: Syria

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Syria is in the midst of rebuilding after a long civil war and the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime. What happens next in Syria poses a challenge for the U.S. and the Trump administration's goals, especially as roughly 2,000 U.S. troops are in Syria to help keep the peace.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and international correspondent Jane Arraf.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Stacey from Tucson, Arizona. I'm headed out to our chicken coop to see if our hens laid any eggs after taking a few days off. This podcast was recorded at 1.05 p.m. on Thursday, February 27th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but here's hoping our hens didn't decide to stop laying eggs. Okay, here's the show. Handy thing to have these days with the price of eggs.

Absolutely. It's you sitting on a gold mine. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security.

And NPR's Jane Araf joins us today for the very first time on the podcast and from across the globe in Damascus. Jane, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. And you're on in part because today on the show, we're going to talk about what's happening in Syria, why it matters, and how it could test President Trump's America first foreign policy objectives. But Jane, I want to start here. There was a civil war in Syria for about 14 years under the government of Bashar al-Assad. And then suddenly it all just seemed to collapse

very quickly back in December. Who's running the country now? Well, the guy that had a big part in that collapse is trying to run the country. His name is Ahmad Ashara. It's his real name rather than his nom de guerre, the name he used when he was an opposition fighter and an insurgency fighter in Iraq for years. And what he's tried to do is pull together a coalition of different kinds of groups. As you mentioned, it fell very suddenly. It was 11 days that it took this coalition of opposition fighters to sweep in and pretty much persuade regime forces to melt away. And that toppled a regime that had been in place

for decades. So all of a sudden now you have these guys who have never run a country. Ashara, the interim president, is causing a little bit of concern in Washington and other places because he was once with Al-Qaeda, the militant group. So he's really got a tough task ahead of him. It's kind of a work in progress.

Can you give some sense of scope to the diversity of Syria too, especially for American listeners where we are still governed largely by a two-party system? It seems like it's much more complex than a country like Syria. Yeah, I mean, the Middle East in particular is pretty complicated, but Syria is probably the most diverse. I mean, we've got a civilization here that goes back thousands of years, and it's multi-ethnic, it's multi-religious, and that is one of the challenges. It is making sure that Kurds, for instance, don't feel so threatened that they continue

a conflict that has been running for years with Turkish-backed troops. The government here has tried to reach out to the Alawites who are the the religious sect that had formed the basis of support for the former regime. There are tons of other groups, Christians, Muslims, all kinds, And the challenge there is essentially knitting together a country that for years had been under repression and which papered over a lot of the differences. Danielle Pletka We should note, Greg, you were also just in

Syria for several weeks doing reporting. And I'd love to hear just from both of you, what's it like in the streets there? What is it like as you walk around Damascus? What does it look like? What does it feel like? You know, to me, it was shockingly normal for a country that had been through such a devastating war. Now, Damascus, the capital, was hit much less hard than other parts of the country where entire neighborhoods, cities have been destroyed. So Damascus is still standing. But I didn't see people that look shell-shocked or are calling for revenge. In fact, the security presence was surprisingly light. The response I got over and over again is, we've just been through 14 years of war. We're exhausted. We just want to rebuild our

lives, our normal lives. But it's hard to do in a place where you don't have electricity. It's tough to get an internet connection, very few jobs. So it's a struggle to return to some sort of normal life. But I was surprised at the attitude and how normal many of the Syrians seem to be. Danielle Pletka Yeah, I still can't believe I'm here. I've got to be honest. You know, when the regime fell in December and we were in here the day after, I had thought at that point I would never see Damascus in my life again because it was it was closed off. I mean, particularly to journalists and to be able to come here and see the euphoria and the lack of fear in so many places was absolutely extraordinary. And you still see that euphoria. You still see the lack of fear, which is huge.

But what you're seeing now is a realization that this is going to take a long time. I mean, you go through the streets, and as Greg mentioned, there's poverty everywhere. There are little kids who are working. I mean, there are some posh parts of Damascus with fancy restaurants But most of this country is desperately poor the infrastructure has been destroyed It needs everything and the thing that's standing in the way of getting anything

Really is that there are these US sanctions in place that are really? Prevent preventing the government from moving forward and doing things like even paying salaries for policemen. Hmm. There are also, Greg, millions of Syrians who are forced to flee this country over the past 14 years. They live all over the globe, obviously many in the Middle East, some here in the US. A lot of them want to go home and you talked to some of those people on your trip recently. Yeah, I mean the biggest refugee populations are in the neighboring countries, Turkey,

Lebanon, Jordan, and they do want to go home. But in many cases, their homes are destroyed. There's no place to live. There's no jobs. There's no electricity or water. So they really can't go home and start rebuilding their lives as much as they want to. But there was one scene that really struck me. It was actually a tech conference which took place at the hotel where I was staying in

Damascus. 700 people turned up, mostly young Syrians and also some Syrian Americans who came from as far away as Silicon Valley. And there was one man in particular I want to mention. His name was Abdul Wahhab Omira. Now, he was a teenager in Damascus when the war began. He was a really bright kid. He developed a better way to dispose of nuclear waste. He got a patent in Syria at age 14, youngest person ever in Syria to get one. But then the security services arrested him because he had a nuclear document in his possession. He was in prison for two months. He saw horrible torture and killings. When he got out, his well-off family decided it's time to flee Syria. They went first to Turkey. They

eventually made it to Chicago. He had to learn English. He kept taking the SAT and ACT tests until he got a perfect score, and he got admitted to Stanford. He graduated last year with a admitted to Stanford. He graduated last year with a computer science degree. He's working on a master's in artificial intelligence. He's a budding entrepreneur. He has this app to help Syrian farmers. So he's hoping he can help by coming and going and helping from Silicon Valley. Others want to go home, but there are just so many obstacles along the way. And the biggest one, it sounds like like it's just money. There's sanctions in which if they

want to raise money and invest in the country they're handcuffed. Absolutely. I mean this was just a recurring theme that we kept hearing is when is President Trump going to lift the sanctions? We want normal relations with the United States. We were never able to have that under the Assad regime. So the Syrians are very open to talking to the Americans, to doing things with the Americans. But there's this big obstacle. The embassy's been closed since, I believe, 2012, a year after the war began. American diplomats can't legally talk to the Syrian government, which is still regarded as a terrorist organization

of the group running the government. So there are all of these roadblocks preventing any kind of normal engagement. Jane, do you have any sense of what Ashara is doing to try to reach out to other countries, particularly the US, to maybe try to ask for that help? Absolutely. He did actually meet with a senior US official, Barbara Leaf, who came here. And the one thing that the US did do was take him personally off their terrorism list. There had been a $10 million bounty on his head from his insurgency days when he was imprisoned by the US for several years in Iraq. So they removed that, but the thing that he is really pressing to be removed is just an incredibly sweeping list of sanctions that affects everything from energy to banking

to importing goods. And without that, because the US has such a key role in the international banking system. Even countries in the European Union, for instance, which have temporarily lifted sanctions, are afraid to go forward with some of those measures because they might fall afoul of US sanctions. So it's really something that has to be untangled and has to be untangled pretty quickly because while people are pretty patient here and as Greg mentioned, there's just this incredible relief that there's no more war and they will put up with a lot for normal lives, that patience won't last forever.

All right, let's take a quick break and when we get back, we'll talk about the view from the US. And we're back and Greg, I think it's fair to say that Syria has largely fallen off the radar here in Washington, especially as Ukraine and Israel have taken more of a front and center focus for the Trump administration. What, if anything, has Trump said about his approach to Syria? Well, very little, Sue. He was asked a couple of weeks ago, and he was sort of very dismissive of Syria. And I'll quote him here. He said, we're not involved in Syria.

Syria is its own mess. They've got enough messes over there. They don't need us involved. So Trump, like presidents Biden and Obama, has wanted to pivot away from the Middle East, focus more on Asia, China in particular. But Mideast turmoil keeps dragging US presidents back in. And Trump has also made some contradictory statements.

He has said the US wants to take control of Gaza and get involved there. He plans to apply maximum pressure on Iran. It's just, I think, very important to understand how dramatic these changes are in the Middle East in the past few months. In particular, Iran and its allies have all suffered major

setbacks. Israel has hammered Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran's own defenses have been substantially weakened, and in Syria we've seen the Assad regime fall after a half century. So it really seems that at minimum the U.S. needs to reevaluate all these upheavals and figure out what's coming next. Doesn't necessarily point to any particular policy or mean the US has to get deeply involved in Syria or the other places, but you do need a sort of realistic, informed position about what has just happened. Jane, the US is engaged in the region. There are 2,000 troops there. What role are they playing? Well, they are mainly there to counter ISIS, the militant group, from resurfacing.

And ISIS teamed up with mostly Syrian Kurdish fighting forces to territorially defeat ISIS. And they've been there ever since. And they're being northeastern Syria and a small part of Syria that borders Jordan. It's a hugely important role and one of the big fears is of what would happen if the US did withdraw troops because the US isn't here fighting ISIS just out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to make sure that ISIS does not export attacks overseas to the US for instance.

So if US forces are not here, someone is going to come in and fill the gap and that someone could quite lightly be Turkey for instance. Syria has been hit by Israeli air attacks and more Israeli incursions into Syrian soil. And while Ahmed Ashara who is the interim president has said that they do not want to pick any fights with Israel, Israel is not their enemy, at a certain point he will

have to rely on someone for protection. And that someone seems to be Turkey. Turkey has held talks in which it appears they have offered to build more bases here. And I think the thing we have to remember is this isn't just some obscure country in the Middle East. This is a country that is really pivotal to regional dynamics and even international dynamics. And it's a country that a lot of other countries will get involved in. J.D. I'm curious about Russia in particular, because for a long time, it did seem like Vladimir Putin had an intense interest in Syria, but

you didn't mention that. I didn't, and I should have mentioned Russia because Russia is hugely important. Russia was a key ally of the Syrian regime. It worked with Iran and Russia to essentially keep down opposition forces for years. So to do that, Russia had built a series of bases here. When the Syrian regime fell, that meant that Russian troops withdrew for the most part as well. But Russia really wants to keep a couple of bases here, particularly a deep water port off of the Syrian coasts. So they're not going

to go away either, but their power here and their influence has been severely diminished. I'd like to ask you both this because one of the things I'm thinking about here is that I think it's fair to say that the 2003 Iraq war casts a very long shadow in the Middle East and how the US is viewed there and in many ways in a negative way. And then if I put that together with Donald Trump saying, look, I want to take a more isolationist approach and like let the region figure it out. Is it possible that a less engaged U.S. is actually a very welcome new reality in the Middle East? I think that's absolutely true in any number of places. You know, just for example, the Trump

administration is strongly backing Israel, calling for the U.S. to take control in Gaza, turn it into a real estate project. Palestinians hear this, and they would certainly like to see less U.S. involvement, not more. And you could point to other places along those lines. But I think Syria is a bit of a separate and different case where the U.S. had a very limited presence. And what I heard from Syrians over and over is that they would like the U.S. government to reopen the embassy. They'd like US companies to come and help rebuild. They would like normal relations for America for the first time and basically forever. So I think there's something slightly

unique about what lies in Syria right now compared to some of the other places in the region. Yeah. You know, the US is always going to be the elephant in the room. So even if it's not saying anything, it's still taking up an awful lot of space. It's like US officials, like President Trump, saying, we're not involved in Syria while there are 2,000 troops in Syria. So clearly the US is involved. If what he's saying is we're not going to be involved in the future. Although that's not clear

That's not really feasible either but to Greg's point about what Syrians want Syrians like many in the Middle East are Essentially really focused on Having normal lives, you know having enough money to be able to put food on the table and send their kids to school, and they're tired of war. And unlike a lot of the other countries right now that are almost completely overshadowed by the war in Gaza, that doesn't resonate so much here. Despite the large Palestinian presence and the history of

Palestinian factions here, this is not a country where people are openly upset as they are in other Arab countries about US backing for Israel in the Gaza War. And what that means is it is seemingly a much friendlier atmosphere for Americans and American investment. Jane, this was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. And that is it for us today, but we're going to be back in your feeds tomorrow with the weekly roundup.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Greg Myhre. I cover national security. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.