“An al Qaeda-run Syria is no better than an Assad-Iran-Hezbollah-run Syria,” he says in the statement. “What is happening there is tragic, but it is not in the United States’ best interest to intervene with a military strike.”

In March 2012, when Santorum was battling Mitt Romney for the GOP presidential nomination, the former senator told TIME Magazine air strikes “would certainly be one of the things” he would consider as a strategy for taking out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“Had President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acted then in support of pro-democracy forces when that rebellion was taking place, we could have removed Assad and helped usher in stability for that country,” Santorum says in Thursday’s statement. “But we have a very different situation today. After nearly two years, 100,000 people killed, a rebel force comprised of al Qaeda and a Syrian regime in a much stronger position, a military strike would no longer be in our national security interest.”