Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says Fall of Syrian Dictator Bashar Assad Gives Us “an opportunity right now for a realignment in that region”; Has Questions for Tulsi Gabbard

See below for video and a few highlights – heavily on the Middle East – from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability.

• “Obviously as chairman of the intelligence committee, I’m getting lots of information on…the situation in Syria – Bashar Assad, the brutal dictator in Syria…brutal beyond belief, using chemical weapons, barrel bombs, his regime was supported by both Iran and Russia, two of our greatest adversaries. The civil war in Syria literally drove 14 million Syrians to leave the country. That puts enormous burdens on other nations in the Middle East. That has led to mass refugee movements towards Europe and even some here to America. Seeing a new chance for a new beginning in Syria is a great opportunity but there’s also again a challenge, because the rebel forces had were previously called al-Nusra, which was affiliated with al-Qaeda. Now they are trying to represent themselves as reformed, but we’re going to have to watch this very carefully, because Syria is made up of not all Sunni Muslims, they have Alawites, they have Christians, they have Druze. Protection of minorities, protection of women’s rights are critical. And Syria in many ways is the key to the Middle East. …We have, working with Kurdish allies, have a number of ISIS prisoners located in Syria, guarded by Kurds, but we have 900 of our troops there. We’ve got to make sure those terrorists are not released. Clearly the fall of the Assad regime happened much quicker than anticipated, because Israel had been able to denigrate and basically destroy a lot of the leadership of Hezbollah and take out a lot of their missile capacity. That’s all good news. Israel also, with our support and others in the region, were able to take out some of the Iranian defense systems, which has exposed the the vulnerability of Iran. And our  assistance there was when we helped Israel take down the Iranian efforts to bomb Israel. This is going to be a volatile time. The good news is if we can end the conflict in Gaza, I think there could be a complete realignment with Iran and terrorist organizations going down and nations like Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis turning more to us. And with the potential of Saudi Arabia actually recognizing Israel and potentially leading to a complete realignment that would be good for peace in the region. But playing this out and getting it right over the next few months are going to be critical and critical to our national security and to our intelligence community. So I’m hopeful, but very much believe this new Syrian rebel group, we have to watch its activities very closely.”
• …this is you know one of my top priorities in these last couple weeks, we’ve got to obviously make sure we fund the government, we’ve got to get the defense bill and the intelligence bill passed, but we also have to get the disaster relief passed for those states that were particularly hurt by the Hurricane Helene. We in Southwest Virginia took a big hit, not as bad as North Carolina but we have businesses that literally have been approved for SBA loans that if we don’t refill the bucket of the Small Business Administration money, those loans won’t go out, and that’s just cruel to the businesses who, through no fault of their own, have been hit by mother nature. And you know this, why they pay taxes, you get FEMA relief, SBA relief in the event of a disaster, is not charity, it’s part of our obligation to each other. So that is a high priority for me…”
• “I’m going to meet with all the…president-elect’s nominees. I did that in the past, I’m going to do it in an orderly process. Mr. Ratcliffe, who I worked with during the first Trump Administration, he was nominated first. I’m sure I’ll see Ms. Gabbard at some point. But, and I’ve said before, I’ve got questions. Bashar Assad was a brutal dictator that murdered 500,000 Syrian people, led to the greatest refugee migration out of the Middle East in decades, was propped up by a brutal Iranian regime, by a Hezbollah terrorist group coming out of Lebanon, and by Russia. I’ve got questions about that and comments made. I also have questions because the whole nature of the intelligence community – we have got the best in the world – but the amount of information that we get from our partners around the world, you think about Israel’s Mossad or the MI5 or 6 in in the UK; they only share that information with us on a voluntary basis, we can’t demand intelligence from our partners, that’s a total relationship based on trust. And you know there have been reports I’ll ask about, Ms. Gabbard’s comments about folks like Edward Snowden
  and Julian Assange, who leaked classified information. I think that undermines our national security. And if our allies don’t have confidence that the intelligence they share will be kept secret they won’t share it and that will make America less strong.”
• “I think we were all surprised; we knew that the rebel groups who were in kind of the northwest of Syria, they’d had control of about um 15%-20% I believe of the whole overall population, much smaller part of the land mass of Syria. We knew they had been pretty well equipped, I mean Turkey I think was aware. And this I think would not have taken place if Hezbollah had not been their effectiveness taken out and if Iran had not had the the beatback that the Israelis did in terms of taking out a lot of their their air defense systems. But the awareness of the timing or how quickly the Assad army would crumble, it frankly brought back memories of what happened to the Afghan military when the Taliban took over, not a very good image from an American standpoint…But in terms of undesignating [HTS as a terrorist group], like President Biden said, I’m open to that, but that’s got to be based upon the performance of this group…There are a whole host of rebel groups in Syria. HTS has tried to redefine itself, I’ve seen some of the interviews with their leader who is saying the right things. But this is not a case where words
  alone, it will be actions. I’m glad to see so far that there doesn’t seem to be plundering of of private businesses; they’ve asked the government bureaucrats to stay on to keep Syria functioning. But trying to keep some of the hardcore Islamist terrorist groups that still exist in Syria at bay and actually trying to move hopefully towards a less authoritarian, I’m not saying full democratic but less authoritarian, regime, different than the Assad regime, would be a step in the right direction. But…I don’t think it would be smart of the administration to de-designate before we see a little bit more of their activities.”
• “One of the reasons that we have seen Russia not be able to come to the assistance of the Assad regime, and you know Assad is now in Moscow, tail between his legs, taking political haven there…other than North Korea and Russia, I’m not sure there were many other countries around the world that would take him. Again, 500,000 of his own people killed and you see the outpouring of of jubilation from Syrians across all sects in Syria. So Russia is clearly on its back foot – you know the Russian losses on a monthly basis, yes they’re eroding away at some of the Ukrainian defenses in the east, but they are losing many more troops, they don’t have an unlimited supply of of men and armaments. And…I know President-elect Trump says he wants to bring about a settlement…I think we’d all welcome a settlement of the Ukraine war, but not one where Putin dictates the terms, not when one where for all the flaws of the democracy in Ukraine a non-authoritarian regime gets taken over by an authoritarian regime, not a settlement that would have Russia then say OK it took us a while but we we took out Ukraine and now we’re going to look at Poland or the Baltic states that are NATO members. So we’ll see what happens in the coming months in terms of Ukraine. I do think it’s important that we continue to equip them. Our NATO allies as well, they have stepped up and we’d all like to see a settlement but on fair terms, not terms dictated by Vladimir Putin.”
• “In terms of the situation in Gaza, I’m glad to see that we’ve got a ceasefire in Lebanon…I think that was in a way what touched off the rebels taking out Assad. I think we need to get to a ceasefire in Gaza. I  think the hostages need to be released. I think it’s still heartbreaking that former Virginia resident Hersch Goldberg-Polin was murdered by the terrorists who was one of the hostages. Heartbreaking story. But you can’t eliminate the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. And there is an such an opportunity right now for a realignment in that region from…the Keeper of the Faith Saudi Arabia, of the Muslim faith. If we could get to a point where the Saudis would recognize Israel and build upon the Abraham Accords started under President Trump, you could have this region totally shift. I mean it was one of the reasons I was so happy for the the settlement in truce at least in Lebanon. I won’t go down this rabbit hole and go on for long, but Lebanon is one of the most diverse countries in the region, it’s got Sunni, Shia, Christian, Druze, it is a very complicated country. And the Lebanese people across their faith basis were sick to death of Hezbollah and its heavy-handed tactics, they were ready for them to go. But when Israel… the bombing went beyond Hezbollah and villages were being hit, you suddenly had a sympathy alignment between all of these groups that were tired of Hezbollah, actually starting to support them. And bringing about a ceasefire there was in Israel’s best interest. Bringing about a ceasefire in Gaza so that this potential remaking of the region is in Israel’s best interest as well.”
• “[Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov has been the longest-serving foreign minister actually in the whole world at this point. He basically parrots the Moscow position and Putin’s position. The idea that somehow we were behind this when I said earlier we didn’t even know the rebel group was going to launch this level of attack and we sure didn’t know that the Russians were going to cut and run and the Iranians cut and run as the Assad army fell apart. But as you as you said, there are other groups, there are ISIS-related groups as you know there are also ISIS prisoners that are some of the worst of the worst, that our Kurdish allies are keeping imprisoned that are in eastern Syria. So the idea that you’ve got this mix of terrorist groups, and clearly HTS they were they were called al Nusra earlier aligned with al-Qaeda, if their transition to a non-terrorist organization, how they treat the people in Syria whether they are willing to adhere to rule of law, you know you don’t get to fully pick your partners in that region, but if their behavior changes then reexamination of their designation would be due. But it’s got to be based on not words but behavior change…the idea of keeping those the most extreme Islamist groups at bay, we’ve got soldiers 900 soldiers in Syria, we have been willing to push back against some of these are Sunni-backed groups often not the Shia-backed groups that Iran has, but…the idea that we have taken military strikes against Al-Qaeda related groups in that region for some time, and at this moment of instability I want to hear the CENTCOM explanation, but to me just at first glance it seems appropriate to keep them at bay, because these groups will see any effort to foster mischief or instability in the region. And unfortunately, whether it’s been al-Qaeda in Iraq or or some of these groups in Syria, the Iraqi people and the Syrian people pay the price for that. So I don’t have a complaint at this point about what CENTCOM did, subject again to getting a full brief.”