It is not our fight, let it play out? – Trump tells US to stay out of Syrian civil war

US President-elect Donald Trump has said that the U.S. military should stay out of the fast-escalating conflict in Syria, where a dramatic rebel offensive reached the capital on Sunday and ended the rule of Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

“THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT,” Trump declared on social media.

As world leaders watched the stunning rebel advance, with its potential to alter the balance of power in the Middle East, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser separately stressed that the Biden administration had no intention of intervening.

“The United States is not going to … militarily dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war,” Jake Sullivan told an audience in California.

Sullivan said the U.S. would keep acting as necessary to keep the Islamic State — a violently anti-Western extremist group not known to be involved in the offensive from exploiting openings presented by the fighting.

On Sunday, rebels entered Damascus after claiming many of the country’s other major cities within roughly 10 days. The head of a Syrian opposition war said early Sunday that Assad left the country for an undisclosed location.

Trump’s comments on the dramatic rebel push were his first since Syrian rebels launched their advance late last month. They came while he was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral.

In his post, Trump said Assad did not deserve U.S. support to stay in power.

Trump said Russia “is so tied up in Ukraine” that it “seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years.” He said rebels could possibly force Assad from power.

The president-elect condemned the overall U.S. handling of the war but said the routing of Assad and Russian forces might be for the best.

“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he wrote in Saturday’s post.

Assad’s government has been propped up by the Russian and Iranian military, along with Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied militias, in a now 13-year-old war against opposition groups seeking his overthrow. The war has killed a half-million people, fractured Syria and drawn in more than a half-dozen foreign militaries and militias. The U.S. early on closed its embassy in Syria and imposed sanctions over the brutality of Assad’s conduct in the war.

The insurgents are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group and says has links to al-Qaida, although the group has since broken ties with al-Qaida.

The insurgents met little resistance so far from the Syrian army, the Russian and Iranian militaries or allied militias in the country.