Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for the director of national intelligence, has previously said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “is not the enemy of the United States,” which may give a glimpse into how she will handle issues in Syria if she’s confirmed by the U.S. Senate as insurgents seized the Middle Eastern country’s largest city of Aleppo on Saturday.
Thousands of Syrian insurgents led by the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham breached Aleppo on Friday and took over most of the city by Saturday, facing little to no resistance from government troops, the Associated Press (AP) reported, citing fighters and activists. Fighters then moved on to the neighboring province of Hama and on Sunday, government troops created a “strong defensive line” in northern Hama, the AP reported, citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition war monitor.
This was reportedly the first time that insurgents clashed with government troops in Aleppo since 2016 when Assad secured his hold on the city. The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the country’s civil war, which started as a 2011 protest against Assad’s rule.
The insurgent’s attack comes seven weeks before Trump takes office. As his election campaign was winding down, Trump wrote on social media in late October that during his first presidency, “We had peace in the Middle East, and we will have peace again very soon!”
It’s yet to be seen how Trump and his administration plan to achieve this long-sought goal but his choice of Gabbard to lead America’s intelligence agencies has raised some eyebrows given her foreign policy stances in the Middle East and elsewhere. While Gabbard has yet to comment on the Syrian insurgents’ attack, she has been outspoken about the ongoing conflict in Syria.
Newsweek reached out to Gabbard via email and Trump’s team via email for comment on the Syrian insurgents’ recent attack.
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Gabbard, a U.S. Army National Guard veteran who served Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021, gained national attention for her anti-interventionist foreign policy stance and Democratic 2020 presidential campaign. She frequently criticized Trump’s foreign policy during his first term, including his decision to end the Iran nuclear deal. Since leaving office, Gabbard has joined the Republican Party and endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Last month, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) during Trump’s first administration and then unsuccessfully ran against him in the 2024 Republican primary, raised concerns about Gabbard regarding her ties to Assad.
“She went to Syria in 2017 for a photo-op with Bashar al-Assad while he was massacring his own people. She said she was skeptical that he was behind the chemical weapons attacks,” Haley said about the former congresswoman during her SiriusXM radio show. “Now this to me is disgusting.”
In 2017, Assad dismissed reports of a recent chemical attack on a rebel-held town in the Idlib province that killed over 90 people and injured dozens more as “100% fabrication,” despite numerous eyewitness accounts to the contrary.
Assad has been accused of committing human rights violations, but Gabbard has voiced her opposition to supporting regime change in Syria.
“Assad is not the enemy of the United States, because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States,” Gabbard told MSNBC’s Morning Joe in 2019. “My point is that whether it is Syria or any of these other countries, we need to look at how their interests are counter to or aligned with ours.”
After Trump announced in December 2018 that U.S. troops fighting against the Islamic State (ISIS) would be withdrawn from Syria immediately, Gabbard wrote a 2019 social media post: “We must bring our troops home from Syria quickly & responsibly. Trump’s announced hasty withdrawal from Syria could leave Kurds vulnerable to slaughter by Turkey’s President Erdogan who has repeatedly threatened to attack them & invade Syrian territory long-held by Syrian Kurds.”
Gabbard has vocally opposed conflict with Iran and Syria and has said that Trump violated the U.S. Constitution by ordering a drone strike on Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, a senior Iranian military figure, in January 2020.
“This was very clearly an act of war by this president without any kind of authorization or declaration of war from Congress, clearly violating the Constitution,” she said on Fox & Friends at the time. “It further escalates this tit for tat that’s going on and on and on, will elicit a very serious response from Iran, and [pushes] us deeper and deeper into this quagmire. And it really begs the question: For what?”
She posted on social media shortly after the Fox News interview: “We need to get out of Iraq and Syria now. That is the only way that we’re going to prevent ourselves from being dragged into this quagmire, deeper and deeper into a war with Iran.”
Iran, a key political and military ally of Assad, has pledged to support the Syrian government in their counteroffensive to the insurgents’ attack, the AP reported, citing a statement from Assad’s office.
Journalist Matthew Gault wrote in an opinion piece for Newsweek last month, “Gabbard has proven in her long career that she’s more interested in the word of dictators and authoritarians than she is of American intelligence agencies.”
Speaking on her 2017 meeting with Assad, Gault wrote, “If she was ignorant of Assad’s various crimes at the time, then it was by choice.”
Gabbard stood by her meeting with Assad during a 2019 interview. When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked if she had any regrets about the meeting, Gabbard said, “No, I think that it is, it continues to be very important for any leader in this country to be willing to meet with others, whether they be friends or adversaries or potential adversaries if we are serious about the pursuit of peace and securing our country.”
