An Obama administration official painfully struggled to explain the ‘Plan B’ for Syria
Pamela Engel
A senior Obama administration official stumbled Thursday when pressed on the US plan to deal with the crisis in Syria, appearing unable to provide details about what comes next after a failed ceasefire.
Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, repeatedly pressed Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a committee hearing.
The US has been searching for a way to help resolve a five-year civil war between the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups that has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and led to the proliferation of extremist groups like ISIS inside the country. But a ceasefire deal brokered with Russia earlier this month fell apart.
“I’d like to understand what Plan B is,” Corker said. “The mysterious Plan B that has been referred to since February, the mysterious Plan B that was supposed to be leverage to get Russia to quit killing innocent people, to get Assad to quit killing innocent people. Just explain to us the elements of Plan B.”