Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Friday that Russia and Iran "have created a total mess" in Syria and President Barack Obama "knew nothing about it."
"You have Iran with the troops and Russia with the airplanes," the developer
told Sean Hannity on Fox News. "It's a total lack of respect and a terrible situation."
Russian airstrikes hit Syrian targets for a third day on Friday that President Vladimir Putin said housed Islamic State terrorists, but U.S. officials have charged that they really are rebel forces that are fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Trump told Hannity that Russia is probably going to get stuck in Syria "for years to come" — similar to Afghanistan for 10 years beginning in 1979 — and that he was not sure that the U.S. should back the rebels because "we don't know who they are.
"We really don't. They might ISIS, for all we know. You have Assad, who is the bad guy, but sometimes the bad guy is better than the people we're going to put in.
"You have to look at what happened in Libya and what happened in Iraq," Trump added. "It's hard to get enthusiastic about backing for billions of dollars people who we have no idea who they are.
"They talk about the rebels and the free Syria, but this has happened to us over the years," he said. "We've been scammed by many, many people."
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.