The transitional Syrian government could collapse and spur a “full-scale civil war of epic proportions” without U.S. engagement, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Rubio’s remarks on Tuesday in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee provided additional insight into President Donald Trump’s decision that the United States would end sanctions on Syria. Trump’s announcement came last week during his first trip to the Middle East since returning to the White House in January.

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“If we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out,” Rubio told his former colleagues in the upper chamber. “If we did not engage them, it was guaranteed to not work out. In fact, it is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and full-scale Civil War of epic proportions, basically, the country splitting up.”

Should Syria’s new government, which has formed in the aftermath of the toppling of the Assad regime, collapse, it “would, of course, destabilize the entire region,” the secretary added.

While the administration had a longer-term plan for diplomacy toward Syria, Trump opted to meet with Ahmad al Sharaa, the new president of Syria and a former al Qaeda militant.

Trump decided to meet with Sharaa during his trip to the Middle East. Rubio told lawmakers that the rationale behind that decision was getting aid into Syria to help civilians, which U.S. sanctions had been unintentionally hindering.

“The most important thing is that partnering nations, the nations in the region, want to get aid in, want to start helping them, and they can’t, because they’re afraid of our sanctions, so they don’t,” he said. “The lifting of the sanctions, its most immediate impact will be to allow neighboring countries to begin to assist transitional authority to build governance mechanisms that allow them to actually establish a government, unify the armed forces under one banner and the like.”

The secretary did warn however that these efforts “won’t be enough” in the long-term, saying there will need to be something more comprehensive “to ensure that if the right steps are taken, we can create an environment for private sector growth that begins to provide economic opportunity to the people of Syria.”

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There are several ethnic groups in Syria that had lived together under a Syrian “national identity,” before Assad “deliberately pitted these groups against each other,” he noted, referencing the Alawites, Druze, Christian, Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Assad’s fall in December posed significant risks in the region as his weapons arsenal and stockpile effectively became up for grabs to the militants who overthrew the regime that lasted more than five decades.