AQABA, Jordan — Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Jordan on Thursday as part of a Middle East trip to promote an “inclusive, Syrian-led” government transition in Damascus and meet with leaders of neighboring nations to try to get them on board, the State Department said.
“All of these conversations are looking to bring all the countries in the region together, as well as beyond the region, in a unified approach to supporting the Syrian people as they emerge from this dictatorship,” Blinken told reporters Thursday after meeting with Jordan’s king and foreign minister. Later Thursday, he also met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Blinken visits Jordan and Turkey amid Syrian political uncertainty
Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Jordan and Turkey on Thursday as he consulted with Middle Eastern allies about the tinderbox of Syria’s political transition after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.
The top U.S. diplomat scrambled to the region after Assad’s forces melted away in the face of a fast-moving rebel assault and the authoritarian leader fled to Russia on Sunday. Now regional powers are competing for influence in an unsettled nation where Washington is seeking to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State and to promote a stable and peaceful transition to new leadership.
Blinken landed first in the Jordanian resort city of Aqaba, where he met with King Abdullah II and Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi.
The leaders discussed a “unified approach to supporting the Syrian people,” Blinken told reporters after the meeting.
Later Thursday, Blinken also met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with whom he “discussed strong U.S.-Turkish regional cooperation and our shared interest in supporting a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition to an accountable and inclusive government,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Thursday.
Blinken previously said the U.S. government will “recognize and fully support” the new Syrian government if the transition process is inclusive and transparent.
Turkey has emerged as a major power broker in Syria, having backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the lightning assault that ultimately toppled Assad.
Turkey’s outsize influence has worried Syria’s other neighbors, who because of its empire’s history distrust Turkish dominion in Arab nations. Turkish-backed forces have also been clashing with the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast of the country as U.S. leaders seek to impose a truce between the two sides.
The rebel coalition, led by HTS, is now working to consolidate control in the country.
U.S. citizen found in Syria says he was imprisoned for months
BEIRUT — An American citizen who was found in Syria on Thursday told reporters that he had been detained in the country for seven months. His presence in Syria was previously not widely known.
The man, who identified himself as Travis Timmerman to NBC News reporters in Damascus, said he had crossed into Syria from neighboring Lebanon on a “pilgrimage” to the Syrian capital. After being spotted by a border guard, he was taken to a Damascus prison, he said.
The Missouri native said he was freed after the fall of the Assad regime Sunday. After wandering the city for a few days, he was taken in by locals who posted a video on social media saying they had found an American journalist.
This is an excerpt from a full story.
Hamas softens demands for Gaza ceasefire
CAIRO — Hamas has softened its demands in ceasefire and hostage-for-prisoner-exchange talks, said a Hamas mid-level official and an Egyptian former official with knowledge of the negotiations.
Hamas agreed to abandon earlier demands for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, both officials said. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity: the Hamas official because he was not authorized to speak to the media and the Egyptian former official to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Hamas agreed to water down its demands for a permanent end to the war, the Hamas official said. According to the Egyptian, Hamas and Egypt are also no longer insisting that the Israel Defense Forces withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor, a nine-mile strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border that Israel seized in May.
According to the Egyptian, Hamas also gave a list of living hostages’ names to Israel via Egypt, in a gesture to pave the way to a deal. Hamas is under pressure because “the situation in Gaza now is terrible. … The people, they are not happy about what is going on.”
The Gaza ceasefire deal under discussion would be for 60 days, the Egyptian said; the number of hostages who would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israel has yet to be agreed on.
Suhail al-Hindi, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said in response to questions from The Washington Post that he had “nothing new” to share on the progress of talks.
Under the proposal advanced by Egypt and agreed to by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority would manage the Rafah border crossing, the former official said. A spokesman for the authority’s prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Cairo maintains that the Israeli presence along the Philadelphi Corridor violates the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty but is willing to accept it in hopes that a deal would stop the Houthis in Yemen from attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea to protest Israel’s war in Gaza. Ships have rerouted around Africa, costing Egypt billions of dollars in badly needed Suez Canal revenue amid an economic crisis.
IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar visited Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the proposal and have since returned home, the former Egyptian official said, adding: “We are waiting for the Israelis to answer.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on Thursday to discuss the ceasefire talks.
Speaking in Jerusalem after the meeting, Sullivan said the United States was seeing “movement” from Hamas. “I believe it can happen with political will on both sides,” he told reporters.
The Biden administration and incoming Trump administration are pushing for a deal before Donald Trump’s January inauguration, the former Egyptian official said.
Balousha reported from Toronto. Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv and Adam Taylor in Washington contributed to this report.
IDF strikes kill 15 people trying to guard aid convoys in Gaza, Civil Defense says
Two Israeli airstrikes overnight killed at least 15 people who were seeking to guard aid convoys traveling through southern Gaza, according to Gaza’s civil defense.
“At around 1:00 a.m., Israeli aircraft targeted aid security personnel while they were preparing to receive an aid convoy that was supposed to pass through the Philadelphi Corridor, the road that trucks have been allowed to enter through for the past two days,” Mohammed al-Mughair, director of equipment and preparation at southern Gaza’s Civil Defense service, said via WhatsApp.
The Philadelphi Corridor is a road along the Gaza-Egypt border that until recently had been restricted to the use of IDF troops.
Fifteen were killed in the “two separate and simultaneous attacks,” and others were injured, Mughair said. The strikes came shortly after the Arrow Brigade, a group linked to Hamas security services, said in a statement that its personnel closed streets and shops along a road in southern Gaza to secure aid trucks from thieves. Local journalists said thieves looted the convoy after the strikes took place.
The Post could not independently confirm whether those killed were affiliated with any armed groups in Gaza.The IDF said on Thursday it carried out “precise strikes on armed Hamas” militants who planned to hijack aid trucks and denied striking aid trucks.
Looting of aid convoys by armed criminal gangs — often in a part of southern Gaza surveilled and patrolled by Israeli forces — has severely disrupted the flow of humanitarian assistance into the enclave in recent months.
New security arrangements appeared to have provided some relief in recent days.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Tuesday that a joint U.N. convoy succeeded in delivering food to nearly 200,000 people in southern and central Gaza. The 105 trucks were able to reach beneficiaries via the Philadelphi Corridor “in coordination with the Israeli authorities, and with the help of the local community,” UNRWA’s media office in Gaza said. The alternative route bypassed a road where many trucks were being looted.
On Wednesday, COGAT, the Israeli military body charged with coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza, said more than 350 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza through “all available routes and crossings.”
In recent days, an international aid worker involved in Gaza said “a police task force called ‘Arrow,’ whose job is to basically track down looters and punish them” helped to secure convoys, enabling the surge of U.N. trucks to reach distribution points in Gaza on Tuesday. The worker spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The IDF strikes early Thursday appeared to have targeted this group, according to journalists on the ground.
Niha Masih contributed to this report
After toppling Assad, can Syria’s rebels rebuild a shattered state?
DAMASCUS, Syria — After sweeping into this capital city with ease, exposing the hollowness of the Assad regime after more than half a century of dictatorial rule, Syria’s rebels now face the more daunting task of governance.
As forces from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that led the charge, advanced steadily from their home base in the north to the gates of the presidential palace, they released conciliatory messages on social media reassuring minorities they would not be persecuted and emphasizing a commitment to a Syria for all Syrians.
Now in charge of a newly hopeful but still wary nation, HTS is confronted with vexing challenges. The group will need to consolidate control over a patchwork of rebel forces and demonstrate political inclusivity, which will be key to getting relief from international sanctions. Most critically, the rebels must allay public fears that they will seek to replace Assadism with their own form of absolute rule.
The Post’s Berlin bureau chief Loveday Morris traveled to Sednaya prison outside Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 10, as Syrians searched for missing relatives. (Video: Loveday Morris, Joe Snell/The Washington Post)
This is an excerpt from a full story.
Iran’s supreme leader accuses U.S. and Israel of orchestrating Assad ouster
In his first address since the toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s supreme leader blasted the United States and Israel, accusing them of orchestrating the overthrow of one of Tehran’s key allies.
“The main plotter, the main planner, the main agent, the main command room is in the United States and in the Zionist regime,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday to a crowd of hundreds packed into a Tehran hall to hear his address.
His remarks, while steeped in the Islamic Republic’s rhetorical tradition of condemnations of Israel and its Western allies, verged at moments into rare confluence with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s characterizations of Assad’s fall. In an address earlier this week, Netanyahu said the collapse of the Assad regime was “a direct result of the blows” Israeli forces “have dealt to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.”
In his speech Wednesday, Khamenei spoke for roughly an hour, seated in a simple chair before a pair of microphones. He held a thin stack of note cards in one hand that he occasionally referenced.
Khamenei sharply criticized Israeli military actions in Syria since Assad’s fall — a campaign of heavy airstrikes and the movement of ground forces into Syrian territory along Israel’s border. He praised Iran’s military and intelligence services and said Syria’s army was too weakened for help from Tehran to have made a difference. And he pledged that setbacks in Syria would only strengthen the resistance against the United States and Israel.
“The more you add pressure, the more steadfast it is, the more crimes you commit, the more it is motivated,” he said. The crowd chanted back: “God is great!” “Death to Israel!” “Death to America!”
This is an excerpt from a full story.
