By Molly Claire Goddard
2:40am PDT, May 22, 2025
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Marco Rubio thinks we all need to be paying close attention to Syria.
During a meeting with lawmakers on Tuesday, May 20, the Secretary of State told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States should brace for the possible collapse of the Middle East region and cited it as the reason
Donald Trump implemented a 180-day waiver on sanctions.
Keep reading for more on Rubio's warning…MORE:
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After Marco Rubio spoke with top Syrian officials last week while accompanying Donald Trump on his trip to the
Middle East, the former senator brought the vital information he gathered back to Washington, D.C.
"It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they're facing, are maybe weeks — not many months — away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up," Rubio warned.
"The lifting of the sanctions, its most immediate impact will be to allow neighboring countries to begin to assist the transitional authority to build governance mechanisms that allow them to actually establish government, unify the armed forces under one banner," he said.
The Florida native emphasized how the sanctions alone "won't be enough" to stabilize Syria: "There's going to have to be something done congressionally or more comprehensively," he added.
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During Donald Trump's
visit to the Middle East, Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman helped to organize a meeting between the leader of the United States and Syrian President
Ahmed al-Sharaa.
According to
reports, during their meeting, Trump allegedly advised al-Sharaa to sign the Abraham Accords recognizing Israel.
"Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter," the Republican leader noted to the media about his fellow world leader.
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Although Ahmed al-Sharaa seemed to make an impression on Donald Trump, he allegedly has a checkered past. The newly appointed leader reportedly fought America as a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq in the early 2000s before leaving the group in 2016 and becoming an advocate for religious diversity.
"The bad news is that the transitional authority figures — they didn't pass their background check with the FBI," Marco Rubio explained during the Tuesday, May 20, hearing about al-Sharaa. "On the flip side of it, if we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we do not engage them, it was guaranteed to not work out."
