Months after similar warnings by Dr. Youssef, Marco Rubio cautions against a potential ‘civil war’ in Syria
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, that Syria may be just weeks away from collapse and the outbreak of a full-scale civil war.
In a session before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said the United States had assessed the situation with the transitional government in Syria. He added that “the bad news is that the transitional authority figures… didn’t pass their background check with the FBI […]. But on the flip side of it is, if we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we did not engage them it was guaranteed to not work out. […] In fact, 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.”[i]
Dr. Mohammad Walid Youssef, head of ICGER, had cautioned against this scenario months earlier, specifically on February 21, 2025. During ICGER’s 2024 Annual Geopolitical Report’s launch, he observed that chaos, division, and unrest would persist in Syria throughout 2025 and that the ruling authority would engage in new conflicts with Syrian communities, including Alawites, Druze, Kurds, and Christians.
Dr. Youssef stated in his analysis of Syria’s projected challenges for 2025: “Chaos, division, and unrest will remain dominant in Syria, and the ruling authority will be unable to unify Syrian territories due to its failure to secure the political, administrative, and economic rights and demands sought by the Druze, Kurds, Alawites, and Christians.”
He added: “The ruling authority is expected to enter into conflict with these communities, driven both by Turkish pressure and internal power struggles within the regime. These confrontations will be fueled by the influence of hardline factions within the new regime that view fighting Syria’s other communities as a religious obligation and a means to secure economic and financial resources that the regime can no longer obtain from major international donors.”
You can watch Dr. Youssef’s full speech during the launch of the 2024 Annual Geopolitical Report.” The warning about the outbreak of chaos in Syria is mentioned between minute 30:44 and minute 31:20.
[i] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v553py965o