White House Rejects Internal Critique of Syria Policy

Foreign diplomats add their voices to protest cable sent by dozens of State Department officials

By Jay Solomon, WSJ

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration reaffirmed its policy toward Syria and said it wouldn’t be swayed by calls within the State Department for airstrikes to weaken the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

The pushback came a day after the release of a protest signed by 51 State Department officials, which said the U.S. risked being complicit in the slaughter of civilians in Syria by failing to punish Mr. Assad’s forces for repeated violations of international cease-fire agreements.

Critics of the White House’s Syria policy, including the government of Saudi Arabia, used the leaking of the cable to intensify calls for the White House to act more aggressively to end the five-year-old civil war.

“There should be more robust intervention,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in Washington in response to a question about the State Department cable. “If the Bashar regime feels that it can continue in a stalemate, much less prevail, there will be no incentive to take the necessary steps to bring about a transition.”

The Saudi diplomat said his government supports airstrikes against Syrian government forces, the establishment of a no-fly zone to protect civilians and the delivery of surface-to-air missiles to Syrian rebels.

Some Western diplomats at the United Nations said privately that the dissenting sentiments were in line with their own. The status quo with Syria wasn’t working, they said, and Mr. Assad and his allies—Russia and Iran—were operating with a sense of impunity.

However, they also noted that military strikes weren’t part of the current equation and are unlikely to gain the consent of the Security Council, where Russia holds a veto, leaving few options.

France’s Ambassador François Delattre said the debate in the U.S. is echoed elsewhere. The question among policy makers and diplomats, he said, was whether the U.S. was demonstrating “caution and patience” or had broken with its doctrine of backing up “words with the threat of force.”

The Obama administration, however, ruled out any major shift in U.S. strategy, which has focused on brokering a political settlement between Mr. Assad and his military opponents.

President Barack Obama pledged in 2013 to strike Syrian government forces after their use of chemical weapons, but changed his position.

“There aren’t any U.S. plans to target President Bashar al-Assad. That’s not part of the calculus,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “None of the other options are better than the one we have been pursuing.”

Both the White House and State Department said they welcomed an internal debate. Secretary of State John Kerry said he would respond to the 51 diplomats after he returns from an overseas trip.

“It’s an important statement and I respect the process, very, very much,” Mr. Kerry said in Copenhagen.

The dissent cable was organized by midlevel State Department officials who have worked on Syria under the Obama administration, according to current and former U.S. officials briefed on its formulation.This included diplomats working in Washington and in U.S. embassies and missions.

The cable was shared with a broader range of State Department officials, some at the assistant secretary level, before it was formally submitted to Mr. Kerry, these officials said. Around 150 diplomats viewed the communication during its formulation.

The signatories voiced fears that the U.S. was alienating key Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, by allowing the Assad regime to use barrel bombs to indiscriminately target civilians among Syria’s predominantly Sunni population.

Human rights organizations estimate that has many as 500,000 Syrians have died in the conflict.

Some former State Department officials, including the Obama administration’s former point man on Syria policy, Fred Hof, publicly backed the diplomats.

“Their superiors should press President Obama one more time to change his policy,” Mr. Hof wrote on the website of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. “If he refuses, their choice is plain: stand up and publicly defend the indefensible, or resign.”

Mr. Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said the Obama administration wouldn’t seek disciplinary action against any of the diplomats or investigate the leaking of the cable’s contents to the media.

—Farnaz Fassihi at the United Nations and Felicia Schwartz in Washington contributed to this article.