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Obama Seeks New Syria Strategy Review to Deal with ISIS, Assad

(CNN) Elise Labott - President Barack Obama has asked his national security team for another review of U.S. policy toward Syria after realizing that ISIS may not be defeated without a political transition in Syria and the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, senior U.S. officials and diplomats said. "The long-running Syria problem is now compounded by the reality that to genuinely defeat ISIL [ISIS], we need not only a defeat in Iraq but a defeat in Syria," one senior official said. "Developments on the ground have caused the national security team to collectively conclude we may not have time for Iraq first. In an ideal world you would drive ISIL out of Iraq and pivot to Syria. But if by then the moderate opposition has been smacked and ISIL is still there, that doesn't help," a senior administration official said. "It has been pretty clear for some time that supporting the moderate opposition in the hopes of toppling Assad isn't going to work," another senior official said.
2014-11-13 00:00:00
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