In January 2017 Tulsi Gabbard, then a Democratic congresswoman of Hawaii, met twice with the Syrian tyrant, Bashar Al-Assad. Those meetings and her defense of a brutal dictator have come back to haunt since the regime’s sudden collapse  and the emergence of the now Trump devotee as the President-elect’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence. 

This week on the Hill, Ms. Gabbard declined to answer shouted questions about her expedition to Syria, as she slipped into one of several private meetings with senators weighing Trump’s unconventional nominees. After leaving a Senate meeting, Ms. Gabbard, who is a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Reserve,  stated she wanted to “address the issue dominating the headlines right now.”

“I fully support and wholeheartedly agree with the statements President Trump has made in recent days regarding the developments in Syria,” Ms. Gabbard continued, without making direct mention of Mr. Assad. On Saturday, the President-elect declared on social media in all caps: “This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved.”

In 2017, Ms. Gabbard was accompanied on her trip to Damascus by a former Democratic member of Congress, Dennis Kucinich. following her stay at Damascus, Ms. Gabbard faced criticism for not labeling Mr. Assad an enemy of the United States, claiming instead that “Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.”

She expressed skepticism of Washington’s findings that the dictator used chemical weapons against civilians, a theory she upheld until at least 2019. Ms. Gabbard also criticized President Trump for ordering a strike on a Syrian airfield in 2017, calling the attack “dangerous, rash and unconstitutional” and accusing the administration of acting “recklessly.”

National security observers point out that such a stance could hurt her chances of confirmation.

“In light of the Assad regime’s documented chemical weapons attacks against civilians and its position as Iran’s primary regional partner, Gabbard’s 2017 engagement with Assad will undoubtedly face intensive examination during confirmation proceedings,” the chief operations officer for the Middle East Forum, Gregg Roman, tells The New York Sun. “Any engagement with Assad’s Damascus should have required evaluation against its potential to legitimize an administration responsible for war crimes while serving as Iran’s essential regional ally.”

The director of foreign policy for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, Jonathan Ruhe, concurs that the meetings will “affect her chances, since they reflect her core softness on Iran and Russia at a time when the US needs to be tougher on both issues – and at a time when the US intel community will be crucial in assessing Iran’s nuclear decisions and Russia’s intentions toward Ukraine and the West.”

Others see it differently. 

“The Assad regime is finished, which plays in her favor. If the regime were still standing, there would be lingering questions about her relations and stance. With the regime’s collapse, her chances for a nomination improve,” a Christian Syrian reformist, Ayman Abdel Nour, a defected Assad government adviser, tells the Sun. 

Critics have, however, been quick to troll and condemn Ms. Gabbard’s Syria history in recent days. “Wonder if [Gabbard] will offer Assad safe harbor at her house,” a former Republican congressman of Illinois, Adam Kinzinger, bantered as the opposition fighters moved toward the Palace. A co-founder of the anti-Trump political action committee The Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson wrote: “Please give Tulsi Gabbard space in privacy in this delicate time.”

Governor Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations at the time of Ms. Gabbard’s Syria visit, also raised the issue on Sirius XM last month, calling her“photo-op” with Mr. Assad “disgusting.”

“She opposed ending the Iran nuclear deal. She opposed sanctions on Iran. She opposed designating the Iran military as terrorists who say, ‘Death to America’ every single day,” Ms. Haley declared. “She said that Donald Trump turned the U.S. into Saudi Arabia’s prostitute.”

The Thinking At The Time

Ms. Gabbard has long advocated for a foreign policy that doesn’t hinge on the United States entering foreign countries and helping to topple what are largely considered to be unfriendly regimes. She further defended her “fact-finding” Assad visit and refusal to refer to him as a war criminal because she felt it “important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we can achieve peace.”

Speaking broadly about the importance of communication with America’s adversaries in the Middle East, the senior director for Eurasian security and prosperity at New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, Kamran Bokhari, tells the Sun that “dialogue is always critical.”

“But Assad had long become a vassal of the Iranians, and diplomacy with Tehran is a terribly complicated negotiation, to say the least,” he explained.

Ms. Gabbard’s stance in 2017 attracted the ire of many opposed to the Assad dictatorship, including the Syrian American Council, America’s largest Syrian community organization. 

“Her trip, which was organized by a pro-Assad organization and is the first by a U.S. lawmaker since 2011, provides dangerous legitimization to a brutal regime that has caused the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II through its war crimes,” the organization said at the time. 

The Council surmised that Ms. Gabbard mistakenly attributes the crisis, including 400,000 deaths and mass displacement, to United States efforts to remove Mr. Assad, despite evidence from groups like the United Nations and Amnesty International that blame the regime for the majority of atrocities. They also decried Ms. Gabbard’s claim that Washington should support Mr. Assad because his forces fight the Islamic State, though many contended that was not an accurate picture of the reality on the ground. 

On the other hand, there are occasions in which Ms. Gabbard, a combat veteran of the Iraq War, did speak of Mr. Assad in less-than-flattering terms. “He’s a brutal dictator, just like Saddam Hussein. Just like Gaddafi in Libya,” she told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “Prime Time” in August 2019. 

Ms. Gabbard said that the reason she is “so outspoken on this issue of ending these wasteful regime-change wars” is because she has “seen firsthand this high human cost of war and the impact that it has on (her) fellow brothers and sisters in uniform.”

“I will do anything and everything that I possibly can to stop sending our men and women in uniform into harm’s way, fighting in these wasteful, counterproductive wars,” Ms. Gabbard told the network. 

Political Transformation 

Once a rising Democratic star and Senator Sanders backer, Ms. Gabbard resigned from her post as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to support Mr. Sanders over Senator Clinton and ran for president in 2020 on an antiwar platform. Ms. Gabbard’s critiques of President Obama’s handling of Syria and her reluctance to label Islamic extremism as a key driver of terrorism garnered her attention on the right, amplified by frequent appearances on Fox News. 

After leaving the Democratic Party in 2022, labeling it an “elitist cabal of warmongers,” Ms. Gabbard endorsed Trump. She spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, criticizing President Biden and Mrs. Clinton’s hawkish foreign policies. 

While Ms. Gabbard’s precise views on the future of Syria post-Assad have not been made explicit, it’s expected she will follow Trump’s lead and advocate a noninterventionist stance.

Lieutenant Colonel Gabbard “is in lockstep with President Trump and his statements on the events in Syria over the weekend. This is why President Trump was re-elected to prevent endless wars and put America First,” a spokeswoman for the transition team, Alexa Henning, tells the Sun via email. Her views “have been shaped by her experience from multiple overseas deployments and not wanting the U.S. to get involved in never ending conflicts abroad that don’t serve American interests.”

Although Trump campaigned on ending and staying out of the conflicts that afflict the Middle East, those who have discussed the matter with him over the years claim he has no patience for tyrants. 

President of the California-based Syrian Institute for Peace, Saed Moujtahed, tells the Sun that he met in Pennsylvania with Trump  and other key Middle Eastern figures during his first term and more recently communicated with his team while campaigning in Muslim areas in Michigan. 

“The conclusion that I got was that Trump did care about what was happening in Syria and did not like Assad, and he is not going to have mercy on any potential Assad, the Assad regime, or anyone affiliated with Assad,” Mr. Moujtahed said.

For and Against 

If confirmed by the Senate as the Director of National Intelligence in January, Ms. Gabbard would serve as the president’s primary intelligence adviser, overseeing 18 agencies within the United States intelligence community. The director attends the president’s daily intelligence briefings, gaining unparalleled access to key decisions. The role, established after the attacks of September 11, was designed to coordinate intelligence efforts and enhance national security.

Critics, however, point to Ms. Gabbard’s lack of experience in intelligence and organizational management and have contended that she is a “Russian asset,” which she has staunchly denied. No hard evidence has ever been brought to confirm that theoryy 

Last week, almost 100 former diplomatic and intelligence officials from Republican and Democratic administrations sent a letter to Senate leaders, published by the nonprofit group Foreign Policy for America, conveying distress over the prospect of Ms. Gabbard acceding as DNI, questioning her previous actions and capacity to deliver impartial briefings. 

Several days later, hundreds of United States veterans, high-profile defense and intelligence leaders, and members of Congress from across the country countered the condemnation by signing their own letter of support for Ms. Gabbard as a “fearless and principled Congresswoman who stood up to entrenched political systems.”

“While I expect the media attacks and anonymous efforts on the Hill to continue against Tulsi, I believe that in the end Tulsi will be confirmed,” the president of private defense and intelligence firm the Ulysses Group, Andrew Lewis, tells the Sun. He said that he fully expects Ms. Gabbard to be the new DNI and “hopefully work to undo a lot of the damage” done by a predecessor as DNI, James Clapper,  so that we can get back on mission and have a competent intelligence apparatus that is not continually caught by surprise when world events happen.”

When asked if Ms. Gabbard has any regrets over the Assad meetings, Ms. Henning responded: “Does Nancy Pelosi? Does John Kerry?” As Speaker of the House and a United States Senator from Massachusetts, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Kerry respectively met with Mr. Assad in 2007 and 2009, years prior to the outbreak of the Arab Spring and subsequent civil war.