Walid Phares to Newsmax: US in 'Good Position' After Assad Ouster

As the U.S. military is already in place in regions of Syria and on the border of Iraq, that leaves the United States in a "good position" after the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Walid Phares, a former policy adviser for President-elect Donald Trump, told Newsmax on Sunday.

"The big question is going to be what will happen to the associates, the partners of the United States, namely the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), the Kurds in the northeast, and also other minorities in Syria," said Phares on Newsmax's "Sunday Report."

Still, the United States is in a "good position" and now it remains to be seen what the incoming Trump administration and Congress will do, he added.

Phares said that for decades, the presence of the Assad family regime in Lebanon and then in Syria has been in support of the Islamic regime in Iran.

Former CIA covert operations officer Mike Baker, also on Sunday's program, warned that the air of "euphoria" being seen in the streets of Damascus may not be long-lived.

"Not for nothing, I was out in Iraq in the early days and watched it descend into absolute chaos in a very short order after the initial euphoria," Baker said. "We have to be very careful about what happens. It's like an overstuffed clown car in Syria. You've got so many actors and players and a very loose coalition… we've got a very short period of time to hopefully have things under control in good shape because the Syrian people deserve that."

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