Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Obama Administration Summons Syrian Envoy Over Alleged Arms Transfer

The Obama administration “condemned in the strongest terms” Syria’s alleged transfer of arms to Hezbollah and suggested that Syria’s actions would affect renewed bilateral relations.

The administration summoned Syria’s top envoy to discuss the transfers, a sign that it has evidence contradicting Syria’s persistent denials.

“The most senior Syrian diplomat present in Washington today, Deputy Chief of Mission Zouheir Jabbour, was summoned to the Department of State to review Syria’s provocative behavior concerning the potential transfer of arms to Hezbollah,” the U.S. State Department spokesman, Gordon Duguid, said in a statement Tuesday. “This was the fourth occasion on which these concerns have been raised to the Syrian Embassy in recent months, intended to further amplify our messages communicated to the Syrian government.”

Israel made public its concerns about reported arms transfers last week; Duguid’s timeline of four encounters in “recent months” suggested that the U.S. concern about the matter predated Israeli announcements.

“The United States condemns in the strongest terms the transfer of any arms, and especially ballistic missile systems such as the SCUD, from Syria to Hizballah,” the statement said. “The transfer of these arms can only have a destabilizing effect on the region, and would pose an immediate threat to both the security of Israel and the sovereignty of Lebanon. The risk of miscalculation that could result from this type of escalation should make Syria reverse the ill-conceived policy it has pursued in providing arms to Hezbollah.”

Obama in recent months has begun to roll back some of the U.S. isolation of Syria implemented during the Bush administration. He has nominated an ambassador to Syria for the first time since 2005, and has spoken of “enhanced” relations.

Syria wants above all to be removed from the State Department’s list of terrorism-sponsoring nations, an action that would open up possibilities for commercial and other ties.

Duguid made clear that the arms transfers could bury that possibility.

“Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism is directly related to its support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah,” he said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.