What Trump will do in the Middle East
A conversation with Joel Rayburn

To learn more about the Assad Regime Anti-Normalisation Act and what sort of Middle East policy can be expected from the next US administration should Donald Trump win, Syria in Transition spoke with Joel Rayburn. Mr Rayburn is a retired US Army officer and historian who served as US Special Envoy for Syria from 2018-21.

The Assad Regime Anti-Normalisation Act is expected to pass the Senate this year or next. Is there a risk that it could end up as a tool that nobody uses?
Rayburn: Right now, the US government is authorised to use pressure tools against the Assad regime — but it is not obligated. The Anti-Normalisation Act will change that. The simple fact that the Act passed the Foreign Affairs Committee and the House of Representatives with overwhelming support has clarified that the Congress wants a pressure approach towards the Assad regime. I can’t think of any other foreign policy issues where you can get so many members of Congress to agree on a particular foreign policy approach. Hence I don’t think it is likely that a future US administration will choose to take a position that is at variance with Congress on this question.

In the event of a passive approach from the White House, what means does Congress have to pressure the administration?
Rayburn: Congress can issue explicit instructions and specific guidelines. What the Anti-Normalisation Act essentially does is prohibit the US executive branch from  using any resources to establish normal relations with the Assad regime until certain conditions are met. Congress controls the government’s budget and can thus determine what policy the US executive branch is able to carry out. This is pretty absolute.

Does that mean that we can expect that the Caesar Act will be fully unleashed soon?
Rayburn: Unfortunately the current administration has chosen not to enforce the Caesar Act and other sanction authorities that Congress gave it to pressure the Assad regime, the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, and to some extent the Houthis. A foreign policy that is so far out of step with the vast majority of members of Congress is not going to survive the current administration. 

Comparing a new administration under Donald Trump to one under Joe Biden, what differences in approach to Syria policy are likely to emerge?
Rayburn: The Obama administration refrained from using all of its available pressure tools against the Assad regime in the 2013-16 period. That was done in the interest of striking a nuclear deal with Iran. In 2021, the Biden administration from the first days in office chose to go back to that approach even though it is absolutely ineffective and has made the situation in the region worse. What the current administration would call deescalation or détente, many in Congress and beyond would call counter-productive appeasement. 

From 2017-21, the Trump administration pursued a policy of pressure that was in line with Congressional intent. The Trump administration’s priority was to apply pressure through an economic-political approach, including strict enforcement of US sanctions along with hard work to deepen the Assad regime’s political isolation. US military pressure on the Assad regime was only indirect, except for the cases in which the US, once on its own and once in a coalition, responded with force to Assad’s use of chemical weapons. A new Trump administration can be expected to continue where it left off, because President Trump’s pressure approach was working well until the Biden administration made the misguided decision to halt it in early 2021.

How do you see the Arab normalisation with Assad going forward?
Rayburn: The Arab countries’ normalisation outreach to Assad has already failed. None of the conditions that the Arab countries said they wanted to achieve has been met. It has even been counterproductive because the Assad regime actually doubled down on narcotrafficking and all sorts of smuggling. Jordan is now in a frontier war with gangs, militias, and the Assad regime itself. The Assad regime has abused the good faith gesture of Arab countries and continues to take steps designed to destabilise them. It is pretty clear that this failed normalisation outreach will not continue.

Nevertheless, in February 2024 Jordan announced the establishment of a new committee to coordinate efforts against narcotrafficking with Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Assad regime. Does that mean that lessons have not been learned?
Rayburn: I don’t think the Jordanians or any other Arab country is under illusions about what they are dealing with in the Assad regime. The whole normalisation outreach initiative was done out of desperation in the absence of US leadership from 2021 onward. Before 2021, the major Arab and European countries had fully bought into the pressure approach President Trump had taken. When the Biden administration signalled that it was downgrading its involvement in Syria, the rest of the Arab countries began weighing options. I always thought the normalisation outreach was an exercise in futility, but I couldn’t disagree with their complaints about a lack of US leadership under the Biden administration.

How has the Gaza war influenced Iran’s regional posture, and can a Trump administration be expected to go back to a pressure approach on Iran, too? 
Rayburn: For the Trump administration, the pressure approaches toward the Assad regime and Iran were complementary. The Trump administration correctly viewed the militant presence and local conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Yemen as a manifestation of the Iranian regime’s deliberate strategy to create new threats against regional states and US allies in particular. Hence the starting point for the Trump administration was to restore deterrence against the Iranian regime — and I think a new administration will go back to this. For example, it is crazy to me that US Central Command is essentially at war with Iranian proxies but the rest of the Biden administration is not enforcing sanctions on Iranian oil sales. 

The Iranian regime created the Axis of Resistance for the purpose of absorbing pressure from the US and others so that the Iranian regime does not have to suffer the consequences of its actions. The current administration apparently wants to rule out US military confrontation with Iranian forces but it is also ruling out US actions against the Iranian regime’s cash flow. 

When you take those two decisions in tandem, it means that the Iranian regime — quite correctly — perceives that the Biden administration does not intend to reestablish deterrence toward Tehran. That choice has implications for other conflicts too, such as the war in Ukraine. The Biden administration does not follow a deterrence strategy, and we are seeing the consequences today. The Red Sea is basically closed to international shipping, the global economy suffers, the entire Middle East is on fire, and the Iranian regime is intervening in a European war without significant consequences.

What is your response to those who argue that the US would be best advised to withdraw from the Middle East entirely?
Rayburn: I think that is fantasy land. The great power competitors, China and Russia, are heavily involved in the Middle East. While the US needs to do everything possible to prevent a hostile Chinese Communist Party from becoming a hegemon in the Indo-Pacific region, it does not make sense to abandon the rest of the geopolitical chessboard to the Chinese and Russians. China, Russia and Iran are in a strategic military alliance that attempts to exert creeping global control at the expense of the US and its allies. This global competition demands global responses. 

If the US were to abandon the Middle East, it would fall under the control of China, Russia, and Iran. Allowing that to happen would be geopolitically incoherent. You have to be able to walk and chew at the same time as a global power. If you send a signal that you are not prepared to defend your interests in a geopolitically vital region like the Middle East, than there is no point in defending them anywhere. It is possible to have a very effective theatre strategy in the Middle East and in other regions without incurring enormous costs.

How would such a strategy look like in the Middle East?
Rayburn: The US should strengthen alliances with the traditional pillar states of the region, namely Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. It should then act in concert with those allies to pressure US adversaries, first and foremost the Iranian regime and its Axis of Resistance, Russia, and China. That is a pretty clear approach. The Obama and Biden administrations adopted the opposite approach, allowing our traditional alliances with those four pillar states to really deteriorate. Naturally, those four allies often have conflicting interests with one another. It is the US role to try to bring them into as close an alignment as possible, and keep them oriented in the same strategic direction to the greatest extent possible. 

What would refocusing on the alliance with Turkey mean for the US support for the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces?
Rayburn: First, you need to have a coherent approach towards the Iranian regime and its destabilising behaviour towards the entire region, Turkey included. Second, you need to address the longstanding Turkey-PKK conflict and the need to bring it to a close. If you are addressing these broader issues, then there is room for resolving the Turkey-YPG question through peaceful means. 

As long as the Iranian regime is able to reach into regional local conflicts, it will burn down all roadmaps towards peace. Having dealt with the Syrian question and Iraq issues firsthand over many years, I believe that they can be solved peacefully through diplomacy if the Iranian regime can be forced to exit those conflicts. And I believe such an Iranian exit can be achieved without war if the proper tools are used, because the Iranian regime is very vulnerable to non-military pressure if it is applied in a coherent way. For that to happen, a US-led international coalition is needed.

Are there specific flaws in the European Syria strategy that you would like to highlight?
Rayburn: UNSCR 2254 is the right roadmap to getting to resolve the Syrian conflict, but the only thing that will make it happen is concerted pressure on the Assad regime and that is what is absent right now. Without coordinated US, European, and Arab pressure, attempts to make progress on the Syrian conflict are hopeless. We were on a very constructive trajectory at the end of 2020. The economic and political pressure on Assad and his allies was mounting, and neither Assad nor his Russian and Iranian patrons had any answer for it. Unfortunately, the Biden administration allowed that to dissipate. Had we continued the path we were on with respect not only to Syria but the entire region, the world would be in a very different place right now. There was every chance of getting the implementation of UNSCR 2254 done. Fortunately, the extreme weakness of the Assad regime means we still have an opportunity to achieve our goals in Syria if we return to the pressure policy that President Trump was employing.