The Washington Post quotes Rafik Hariri Center Resident Fellow Faysal Itani on how an influx of Syrian refugees to the United States would affect US policy on Syria:
Faysal Itani, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said in an interview that he doesn’t “anticipate that there would be a major shift in U.S. policy toward the Syrian conflict, regardless of the scale of the refugee problem.”
But he added that even before the recent arrival of so many refugees on European soil, top administration officials had been discussing how to introduce “bit more nuance, and a bit more flexibility” into their resettlement program for Syrian refugees. “There’s a humanitarian strain” in the administration, Itani said, that had manifested itself in the policy discussions surrounding Syrian refugees. “It’s not the dominant one, but it’s there.”