Incoming Trump envoy presses Syrian rebels to release hostages

President-elect Trump’s incoming hostage affairs envoy Adam Boehler pressed the rebels in Syria to release the American hostages in the country as the region grapples with more instability.

“The most important thing we should be thinking about right now is whether we can get Americans home,” Boehler said Monday on “Fox & Friends.” “There is an American that’s there. In fact, there are four or five more.”

Boehler mentioned the American Austin Tice, a freelance journalist who disappeared near the Syrian capital city of Damascus in August 2012. A video released weeks after he went missing showed Tice blindfolded and being held by armed men.

President Biden said Sunday that the U.S. believes Tice is still alive, 12 years after his disappearance.

Tice’s family members met with White House and State Department officials in recent days. They have, for years, put pressure on government officials to bring him home.

The conversations come after rebels in Syria overthrew the government and President Bashar Assad over the weekend, concluding a 10-day offensive where fighters took over government-controlled land. Assad fled the country with his family and was granted asylum in Russia.

The upheaval in the country is adding to the instability in the region with Israel, Iran and proxy groups. Boehler said it would be “great” to get Tice back to the United States, because the Syrian regime “is collapsing.”

“You see that Bashar went to Russia, and now you have rebels that may or may not be friends to the United States,” he said.

As the United States prepares for the Trump administration to take power, questions remain about how he will interact with the growing international crises. Boehler said he thinks the Biden administration has done “nothing” and uses “only words,” which has empowered Israel to step “into the void” and “actually blows people away.”

“They blow them away because they create a situation where pagers blow up in Hezbollah. They create a situation where they take out Nasrallah. And now the big difference is the president of the United States, Trump, just got elected,” he said.

Boehler continued, noting that since Trump won the presidency, things have begun to change in the Middle East.

In Syria, “the rebels got emboldened.” In Ukraine, they “suddenly” want to talk about a ceasefire, where they “didn’t before,” he argued.

“All of those things that the president of the United States, Trump, promised that peace would start through strength, already started since his election,” Boehler said.