The United States has warned the Assad regime against holding up the political process, threatening it with tough international sanctions similar to those already imposed on Iran, which has been described as the “toughest in history.”
Jim Jeffrey, the US special representative for Syria, on Friday said that the United States will pursue “a strategy of isolation,” including sanctions, with its allies if Bashar al-Assad holds up a political process aimed at ending Syria’s seven-year war.
Jeffrey also said Washington would work with countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to impose tough international sanctions if the Assad regime failed to cooperate on rewriting the Syrian constitution as a prelude to elections.
“If the regime does that, we believe that then we can go after it the way we went after Iran before 2015 – with really tough international sanctions,” Jeffrey said, referring to secondary sanctions against Tehran for its nuclear program.
“Even if the U.N. Security Council won’t pass them we will just do it through the European Union. We will do it through our Asian allies, and then we will make it our business to make life as miserable as possible for that flopping cadaver of a regime and let the Russians and Iranians, who made this mess, get out of it.”
Jeffrey earlier said that the Assad regime and its allies have not won the war in Syria, adding that right now the Assad regime is a “cadaver sitting in rubble” with just half the territory of Syria under its control and cannot hope to get international support for reconstruction or economic revival.
Meanwhile, a delegation from the Syrian Negotiations Commission headed by Nasr al-Hariri held a number of meetings in New York with Western officials earlier this week with the aim of pushing the political process ahead and initiating the work of the constitutional committee.
Hariri stressed that they are seeking to find a solution that honors the Syrian people’s aspirations for building a democratic state that guarantees freedom and dignity for all citizens after getting rid of the authoritarian Assad regime which is to blame for the spread of extremism and terrorism. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
