The State Department scrambled to give assurances that comments by Secretary of State John Kerry did not indicate a shift in the administration’s view of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his future.
Remarks in a CBS News interview in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt were interpreted by some as signaling a softening of the long expressed stance that, given regime abuses, the huge death toll, and humanitarian suffering resulting from the Syrian civil war, there can be no future role for Assad.
Reiterating the view that the conflict can only end with a political solution, Kerry spoke of efforts to “re-ignite a diplomatic outcome.”
“To get the Assad regime to negotiate, we’re going to have to make it clear to him that there is a determination by everybody to seek that political outcome and change his calculation about negotiating.”
“And you’d be willing to negotiate with him?” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked.
“Well, we have to negotiate in the end,” he replied.
Although Kerry did not say specifically that the U.S. would sit across the table from Assad, the wording of his response to that question, and the previous comment about changing “his” – Assad’s – calculation about the need to negotiate, were read as saying as much, judging from media coverage and social media reaction.
Kerry spokeswoman Marie Harf, traveling with the secretary, used her Twitter feed to counter that interpretation. She said Kerry had merely “repeated long-standing policy that we need negotiated process w/regime at table – did not say we wld negotiate directly w/Assad,” she tweeted.
“Policy remains same & is clear: there’s no future for Assad in Syria & we say so all the time …”
Harf drew attention to a March 12 statement by U.S. special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein, in which he said that “Assad’s desperation to cling to power through daily terror reminds us all that he has long lost legitimacy and he must give way for a real political transition.”
Kerry’s comments in Egypt came hours before he headed to Switzerland for the latest round of talks with his Iranian counterpart ahead of an end-March deadline for a deal on its nuclear program.
As Assad’s closest ally, Iran would welcome any shift in the U.S. stance on the Syrian dictator’s future. The administration has stressed repeatedly that the nuclear talks are separate from any other aspect of the U.S. relationship with Iran. It has also ruled out making concessions relating to Iran’s role in the region, despite recognition that the U.S., Iran and Assad share a common enemy in the ISIS.
More than three years after President Obama first publicly called on Assad to “step aside,” the growing reach and successes of ISIS have led some security analysts to conclude the jihadists pose a greater threat to regional stability than the dictator does. The point is frequently hammered home by Assad’s allies in Moscow and Tehran.
Proponents of that argument have pointed to developments in Egypt and Libya, where the toppling of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Khaddafi in 2011 paved the way in the former for growing instability and a Muslim Brotherhood government – itself ousted by the military after a year – and continuing chaos and terrorism in the latter.
“None of us – Russia, the United States, coalition, and regional states – wants to see a collapse of the government and political institutions in Damascus,” CIA Director John Brennan said at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Friday.
Warning that “extremist elements” in Syria were on the ascendance in some places, he said “the last thing we want to do is allow them to march into Damascus.”