“Well Aleppo is a disaster,” he said. “It’s a humanitarian nightmare, but it has fallen from any standpoint. What do you need, a signed document?”
That’s not true today, but given the latest White House decision to delay any action to respond to the crisis, President Obama may be ensuring that Trump’s vision of a fallen Aleppo becomes a reality. And like Trump, Obama seems to have concluded there’s not much the United States can or should do about it.
At last Friday’s National Security Council meeting on the Middle East, top Obama administration officials tabled any decisions on whether to increase the U.S. response to the ongoing Syrian and Russian aerial bombardment of civilians in Aleppo, The Post reported earlier this week. The administration prioritized discussing the new Iraqi-led offensive against the Islamic State in Mosul and the future offensive in Raqqa, for which planning is already underway.
But despite what Secretary of State John F. Kerry has called ongoing Syrian and Russian war crimes in Aleppo, there was no action on any of the several options discussed at lower-level administration meetings, including but not limited to limited strikes against the Assad regime’s air force or an increase in the quantity or quality of arms provided to the moderate Syrian rebels in the area.
One senior administration official pointed toward the slow pace of the bureaucracy in responding to the Aleppo crisis as evidence the White House has decided that Aleppo can’t be saved and therefore the United States should not try.
“They are giving the Russians time to finish the job in Aleppo, in part to tie the hands of the next president,” the official told me.
The Obama administration officially rejects any suggestion that they have thrown in the towel on saving Aleppo. Following the entirely predictable collapse of the U.S.-Russia cease-fire agreement Kerry spent months working on, the State Department began a new diplomatic initiative last weekend by convening a meeting in Lausanne on Syria that included representatives from Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. After the meeting, Kerry declined to reveal any of the new ideas that may have emerged from the “brainstorming” session. He then traveled to London and discussed Syria with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. They announced they are considering additional sanctions on Syria.
“Let me make it clear, President Obama has not taken any options off the table at this point in time,” Kerry said.
But by delaying discussion, much less any final decision, on how to stop the assault on Aleppo or protect civilians there, the White House has denied Kerry any meaningful leverage over Syria and Russia, dooming the new talks to the same failure as the previous round.