Sovereignty Support Movement Sovereignty for West Asia
from the News Desk at The Cradle, May 14, 2025
Rubio made the comments during a press conference with his Syrian counterpart, coinciding with reports of talks between Damascus and Tel Aviv.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart in Turkiye on 15 May that Syria faces “two choices,” either a “major transformation” or a “brutal civil war.”
“There are two routes here. One will be success, and we will have a major transformation in the region, or you are going to have a brutal civil war,” Rubio said at a press conference after talks with Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani.
“We prefer the first option, not the second,” the Secretary of State went on to say.
According to a statement by the Syrian Foreign Ministry, Rubio and Shaibani “discussed details of lifting US sanctions on Syria, improving relations between Damascus and Washington, and ways to build a strategic relationship.”
وزير الخارجية والمغتربين السيد أسعد حسن الشيباني يلتقي في مدينة أنطاليا التركية وزير خارجية الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية السيد ماركو روبيو، بحضور وزير خارجية تركيا السيد هاكان فيدان لمناقشة تفاصيل رفع العقوبات الأمريكية عن سوريا، وتحسين العلاقات بين دمشق وواشنطن، ومناقشة سبل بناء… pic.twitter.com/AY4LmpMC4q
— وزارة الخارجية والمغتربين السورية (@syrianmofaex) May 15, 2025
The meeting came two days after US President Donald Trump announced from Riyadh that Washington will be lifting all sanctions on Syria, which were imposed on the country for 14 years in an effort to isolate and cripple the former government of president Bashar al-Assad.
Trump met with Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa on 14 May, marking the first such meeting between Syrian and US officials since the start of the war in 2011. The president called on Sharaa to normalize ties with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords.
“I told [Sharaa], I hope you’re going to join [the Abraham Accords] once you’re straightened out, and he said yes. But they have a lot of work to do,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One following his meeting with the Syrian president, who was once an Al-Qaeda chief and before that a deputy to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Hebrew news outlet Channel 12 reported on 15 May that talks between Israel and Syria are already underway. According to Channel 12, the talks are being mediated by the UAE. The report also says a meeting was held recently in Azerbaijan between the chief of the Israeli army’s Operations Directorate, Oded Basyuk, and representatives of the Syrian government.
Turkish representatives were also present at the meeting, Channel 12 said. Another report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the talks were being mediated by Qatar and have been underway for months.
During his visit to Paris last week, Sharaa confirmed that Damascus has been engaged in indirect deconfliction talks with Tel Aviv.
Sharaa did not point to any effort to normalize ties with Israel, but a US official who visited Damascus recently said that the interim president informed him of Syria’s “interest” in joining the Abraham Accords under the right circumstances.
Since the ousting of Assad’s government, Israel has waged a violent campaign of hundreds of airstrikes targeting sites belonging to the former Syrian military. Israeli strikes also recently targeted Syrian security forces during clashes between militant groups linked to Damascus and armed members of the Druze minority.
Tel Aviv has also expanded its illegal occupation in the country and taken over large swathes of southern Syria.
In line with a list of US conditions for the removal of sanctions on Syria, Sharaa’s government has been cracking down on Palestinian resistance factions present in the country, which for years had been given refuge and freedom of operation under the former government.
Syrian arrest campaigns and asset seizures have recently targeted members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
Washington has also demanded that Syria take action to crack down on extremists – yet several extremist armed groups have already been incorporated into the country’s new army and security forces.
Some of these groups were supported by the US during the 14-year war on Syria.
