Report: US tried to encourage Syrian military coup

The Obama administration maintained secret communications with senior Syrian officials in an effort to overthrow embattled President Bashar al-Assad, The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday.

As the Assad regime began a violent crackdown on protesters in 2011, U.S. intelligence attempted to identify officials who could potentially lead a regime change, according to the report.

“The White House’s policy in 2011 was to get to the point of a transition in Syria by finding cracks in the regime and offering incentives for people to abandon Assad,” a former senior administration official told The Journal.

More than two-dozen U.S. officials, Arab officials and diplomats spoke to The Journal for the report.

U.S. officials said the communications came intermittently, sometimes directly and sometimes transmitted through intermediaries in Russia and Iran, and were focused on specific issues.

“We’ve had times where we’ve said: ‘You could create a better environment for cease-fires if you stop dropping barrel bombs,’” one senior U.S. official said. “There’s communicating on specific issues. It’s not like Cuba or Iran, where we thought that we would essentially, in secret bilateral negotiation, resolve the issue.”

But a lack of progress and the escalation of the conflict led the U.S. to pursue a more robust foreign policy in the summer of 2012, arming rebel forces and publicly calling for the removal of Assad.

The administration also sent warnings, through Russian and Iranian officials, to Assad in 2012 not to use chemical weapons, the report said.

Then-Deputy Secretary of State William Burns also made two phone calls to his Syrian counterpart, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, to relay the warnings.

President Obama drew a public red line on Assad’s use of chemical weapons in August of 2012.

More than 250,000 have been killed in Syria since the conflict began, and more than 4 million have fled the war-torn nation, sparking an international refugee crisis.