U.S.’s Military Withdrawal Amid
A Very Intermeshed Middle East
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria could negatively impact the campaign to rid the country of Iranian influence while telegraphing a message of abandonment to our Kurdish allies as Russia solidifies control in Syria.
Trump confirmed his decision to remove all 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria, most of whom have been advising and training local militias fighting the Islamic State. “We have won against ISIS,” Trump declared, adding, “Our boys, our young women, our men – they’re all coming back, and they’re coming back now.”
Despite Trump’s pronunciations, IS still controls small pockets of territory along the Syria-Iraq border.
While fighting IS was Trump’s stated goal, any withdrawal will have dramatic consequences for regional actors vying to fill the power vacuum following the years-long civil war in Syria.
Our Kurdish allies are sure to be most immediately impacted. U.S. troops on the ground have been working to aid the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which consist almost entirely of Kurdish fighters.
Without U.S. protection on the ground, the Kurdish forces will doubtlessly become vulnerable to Turkish reprisals. Turkey considers the Kurdish militias terrorists and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to launch a fresh offensive against them. The Kurds have been seeking to establish a formal presence along the Turkish border.
The U.S. move will provide Erdogan a boost at a time when Turkey has been leading all-out political warfare against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death of Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia is a key regional ally in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism and Iranian expansionism.
Trump’s purported decision sends the wrong message to other militias who might now be reluctant to work with us in the future, perhaps in Afghanistan or Iraq.
It remains to be seen whether the phased U.S. removal of ground forces signals a larger sea change in policy in that country, particularly with regard to future U.S. airstrikes against IS positions.
The withdrawal telegraphs a message of retreat at a time when Iran has suffered major losses in Syria. Iran has been humiliated and strategically devastated by Israel’s repeated strikes against Iran-run military bases in Syria, and has been feeling the pressure. The U.S. military presence is Syria has been viewed as important to pushing back against Iranian expansionism.
Iran, together with Russia, has been supporting the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. withdrawal will surely be viewed in Tehran as providing much-needed breathing room for the Iranians to attempt to regain their influence in Syria. And the Russians will quietly celebrate the U.S. withdrawal since it leaves Moscow as the dominant military force in the country.
Was The Dossier Used To Determine That
Russia Interfered In The 2016 Election?
In testimony, former FBI Director James Comey contradicted the claim made during previous testimony by former CIA Director John Brennan that the anti-Trump dossier was “not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment” that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
The dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele, was produced by the Fusion GPS firm. Fusion was paid for the dossier work by Trump’s main political opponents, namely Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), via the Perkins Coie law firm.
A January 6 U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) report released by Comey’s FBI, Brennan’s CIA and the NSA under Mike Rogers assessed that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. It also found that Russia worked to aid Trump’s electoral victory.
In testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees last week, Comey stated that material from the Steele dossier was indeed utilized in the IC report. Comey went on to describe a conversation that he said he had with Brennan about how to include the dossier material in the IC assessment.
Comey’s descriptions are at direct odds with a statement Brennan made during May 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in which Brennan claimed the dossier was “not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment” on alleged Russian interference. Brennan repeated that claim during numerous news media interviews.
A similar claim was made by former NSA Director Rogers, who wrote in a classified letter that the dossier played a role in the IC’s assessment and a dossier summary was included in an initial draft appendix.
Meanwhile, in the same testimony, James Comey admitted that when he briefed then President-elect Donald Trump about the controversial dossier, Comey did not inform the incoming president about who financed the document.
The detail is particularly relevant since the embattled former FBI director admitted in different testimony two weeks ago that he was aware the dossier authored by former British spy Christopher Steele was financed by Democrats who opposed Trump.
Comey last year stated that he pushed back against a request from Trump to possibly investigate the origins of “salacious material” – meaning the dossier – that the agency possessed in the course of its investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.