Pencilneckal-Assad
Scourge of Qusayr...
, who has seen growing acceptance from Arab nations that have concluded he won the brutal civil war.
Meeting with his Israeli and UAE counterparts, Blinken said that President Joe
The Big GuyBiden
...46th president of the U.S. An incredibly corrupt version of Jar-Jar Binks, only well into his dotage. The dumbass who abandoned Afghanistan....
's administration's policy on Syria was largely focused on humanitarian relief.
"What we have not done, and what we do not intend to do, is to express any support for efforts to normalize relations or rehabilitate Mr. Assad," Blinken told a joint news conference, not referring to Assad as president.
The United States has not "lifted a single sanction on Syria or changed our position to oppose the reconstruction of Syria until there is irreversible progress toward a political solution, which we believe is necessary and vital," Blinken said.
A US law known as the Caesar Act came into force last year that punishes any companies that work with Assad as he seeks to rebuild after a decade of war.
The Caesar Act, accompanied by a slew of US sanctions on Syrians close to Assad, aims to force accountability for human rights
One man's rights are another man's existential threat.
abuses and to encourage a political solution in Syria.
The United Arab Emirates has earlier said that the Caesar Act made it difficult for Syria to return to the Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
But individual Arab states have been warming to Assad, with Jordanian King Abdullah II earlier this month speaking to the Syrian leader by phone for the first time since the war.
Syria has also worked with Egypt and Jordan to bring badly needed fuel into neighboring Leb
...In 2020 Hezbollahblew up a considerable portion of Beirut and many of its inhabitants when its ammonium nitrate facility exploded. They blamed it on... somebody else. It wasn't them though. Trust them on that. And it ain't never coming to trial..., from which Syrian troops were pushed out in 2005.
Syria's war has killed around half a million people, displaced millions of others and helped allow the rise of the brutal Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
krazed killer group.
Assad has crushed opposition through brute force and an alliance with Russia and Iran, although he still lacks control of northern areas run either by Kurdish fighters or
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
and its proxies.