The Cable
The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

Rumor mill: Another name surfaces for Damascus

The Obama administration promised to send an ambassador to Syria in June after a four-year absence, but as of yet no nominee has surfaced. The Cable brought you some informed speculation about the choice earlier this month, but now a new name is being reported. According to Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper, Joseph Adam Ereli is now ...

The Obama administration promised to send an ambassador to Syria in June after a four-year absence, but as of yet no nominee has surfaced.

The Obama administration promised to send an ambassador to Syria in June after a four-year absence, but as of yet no nominee has surfaced.

The Cable brought you some informed speculation about the choice earlier this month, but now a new name is being reported.

According to Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper, Joseph Adam Ereli is now the administration’s top choice for the post.

Ereli is U.S. ambassador to Bahrain and served as the public affairs counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad before that. According to his official State Department bio, he served once as a program officer in Damascus in addition to postings around the region including Egypt, Ethiopia, and Yemen.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

There are also ongoing rumors that when the United States announces its choice, the Syrians will simultaneously announce they are replacing their ambassador in Washington, Imad Moustapha, whose blog can be found here.

A spokesman for the Syrian embassy told The Cable that those rumors are baseless.

"The ambassador is still on top of his work and there will be no new Syrian ambassador to the U.S. in the near future," the spokesman said.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

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