It was 6:30 a.m. Children were waking up for school. A rocket attack, then a strange smell. Dozens collapsed, convulsing and foaming at the mouth before choking to death, including a pair of infant twins.
The Khan Shaykhun chemical attack shocked the world and jolted the U.S. into action. In 2017, then-President Trump immediately ordered retaliatory airstrikes against the perpetrator: Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Tulsi Gabbard, who is now Trump’s just-announced pick for director of national intelligence, had been in Damascus only weeks before the attack, on a secret visit with Assad. Later, she would say he was “not the enemy of the United States.”
Several of Trump’s Cabinet choices this week have generated significant controversy, including accusations of inexperience lobbed against Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth and uproar among Trump’s own party following the nomination of scandal-ridden Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general. However, Senate Republicans shouldn’t be distracted: Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination is by far the most dangerous Cabinet pick for America’s national security.
Gabbard’s curious relationship with the Syrian dictatorship raised eyebrows after a widely publicized row with Hillary Clinton in 2019, when the former secretary of State famously insinuated that Gabbard was a “favorite of the Russians” during her run in the 2020 Democratic primary. But for myself and other Syrian Americans, Gabbard’s comments on Syria have been of deep concern for nearly a decade, and should be examined deeply by the senators who have yet to vote on her confirmation.
In 2013, Gabbard’s first year in Congress, the Hawaiian representative published an op-ed in the Huffington Post opposing American military action against Assad in response to the Ghouta chemical attack. In the piece, Gabbard called Assad “morally reprehensible,” but voiced concerns about the consequences of intervention — not at all an uncommon stance during the intense debate in Washington over then-President Obama’s so-called red-line on Syria’s use of chemical weapons.
But by 2015, Gabbard had become a fringe voice on the growing hostilities in Syria. In a series of tweets, including one directed at Gabbard’s fellow Trump Cabinet nominee Marco Rubio, Gabbard not only expressed support for Russian intervention in Syria, but questioned why the U.S. doesn’t join hands with Moscow.
Gabbard contended that Russia was attacking al-Qaeda affiliates — a decade-long excuse for indiscriminate bombing promoted by both the Russian and Syrian regimes. In reality, Russia was engaged in a joint reign of terror with the Syrian dictatorship against civilians, including a hospital-bombing campaign that saw over 300 medical facilities attacked by the end of 2015.
Gabbard became one of the most vocal anti-interventionist voices on Syria in Congress, repeatedly calling for an end of efforts to overthrow the Assad regime and introducing legislation to halt support for the Syrian opposition in 2016.
This earned Gabbard the attention of officials from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a virulently antisemitic, pro-Assad Syrian nationalist party whose emblem, the Zawbaa, resembles a Nazi swastika. Those officials infamously helped sponsor a free trip for Gabbard to Damascus, where she met with Bashar Assad just weeks before the Khan Shaykhun gas attack. After the subsequent American strikes, Gabbard called Trump’s decision to retaliate “dangerous, rash and unconstitutional.”
Since then, Gabbard has only escalated her pro-Assad rhetoric, promoting conspiracy theories about Assad regime chemical attacks against civilians, including assertions that the Khan Shaykhun attack was “staged” by the Syrian opposition.
Gabbard’s bizarre relationship with the Syrian regime is just one of many affinities she maintains with dictatorships opposed to the U.S., from regurgitating pro-Russian rhetoric on the war in Ukraine to accusing Trump of “sabre-rattling” against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Senate Republicans have a threat to national security on their hands — Gabbard is unlikely to reverse a decade of rhetoric and activity that under normal circumstances would likely get a layperson denied a security clearance.
Our intelligence community is America’s first line of defense. Republicans in the Senate have an obligation to protect it at all costs.
Kareem Rifai is a Syrian-American graduate student at the Georgetown Security Studies program.
