Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday signaled a willingness to work with President-elect Donald Trump.
{mosads}”We cannot tell anything about what he’s going to do,” Assad said Tuesday in his first public reaction to the U.S. electoral results. “But if … he is going to fight the terrorists, of course we are going to be … [a] natural ally in that regard with the Russian, with the Iranian, with many other countries,” he told Portugal’s state television Tuesday, according to Agence France-Presse.
Trump has signaled he may end U.S. aid to moderate opposition groups currently fighting the Assad regime in favor of focusing on the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS,” he told The Wall Street Journal last week. “Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria. … Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.”
Assad called Trump’s focus on ISIS “promising” but raised doubts about whether he can deliver results.
“What about the countervailing forces within the administration, the mainstream media that were against him? How can he deal with it?” Assad asked.
“That’s why for us, it’s still dubious whether he can do or live up to his promises or not. That’s why we are very cautious in judging him, especially as he wasn’t in a political position before.”
One such division was on clear display Tuesday. Even as news broke of Assad’s qualified endorsement of Trump, the House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation to sanction Assad’s regime.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) announced the bipartisan passage of the Caesar Syrian Protection Act on Tuesday afternoon
The measure, which seeks to sanction members of the Assad regime for human rights abuses, was introduced in July.
“Republicans and Democrats recognize the need to isolate the Assad regime for its continued atrocities against the Syrian people,” Ryan said in a statement. “I’m glad the White House has stopped blocking these critical sanctions, which are a necessary response to Assad’s crimes against humanity.”
The passage also comes one day after the Journal reported that the European Union had sanctioned members of the Syrian regime for “violent repression against the civilian population in Syria.”
The U.S. currently leads an international coalition conducting air strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and the current administration also backs rebels fighting Assad.
The Syrian regime has been embroiled in a civil war with opposition groups trying to overthrow Assad since 2011. Recently, the regime has been fighting with rebels for control over the city of Aleppo.
Trump admitted during his interview with the Journal last week that he “had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria.”
Throughout his campaign, his rhetoric focused on the battle against ISIS, which maintains a stronghold in the Syrian city of Raqqa.