Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, has said that she sees regime change in Syria as one of the Trump administration’s priorities in the country wracked by civil war.
Defeating Islamic State, pushing Iranian influence out of Syria, and the ousting of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad are priorities for Washington, Haley said in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union, which will air in full on Sunday.
“There’s not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime,” Haley said, while reiterating that defeating Isis was still the number one policy goal. “If you look at his actions, if you look at the situation, it’s going to be hard to see a government that’s peaceful and stable with Assad.”
“Regime change is something that we think is going to happen.”
The comments represented a departure from what Haley said before the United States hit a Syrian air base with 59 Tomahawk missiles on Thursday in retaliation for what it said was a chemical weapons attack by Assad’s forces on Syrian civilians.
President Donald Trump ordered the missile strike after watching television images of infants suffering from chemical weapons injuries.
“You pick and choose your battles and when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,” Haley had told reporters on 30 March, just days before dozens of Syrian civilians died from chemical weapons injuries.
Haley’s latest comments jarred with remarks made by secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who said on Saturday that Washington’s first priority is the defeat of Isis.
Once the threat from Isis has been reduced or eliminated, “I think we can turn our attention directly to stabilising the situation in Syria,” Tillerson said in excerpts from an interview on CBSs Face the Nation, that will air in full on Sunday.
Tillerson said the United States is hopeful it can help bring parties together to begin the process of hammering out a political solution.
“If we can achieve ceasefires in zones of stabilisation in Syria, then I believe – we hope we will have the conditions to begin a useful political process,” Tillerson said.
Syrian forces launched further airstrikes on Saturday that killed 18 people including five children in rebel-controlled Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the civil defence rescue service reported.
Reuters contributed to this report
