US diplomats shaken by Trump decision to exit Syria
US President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw from Syria humiliates US envoys who have said the United States would maintain a presence indefinitely to prevent the return of the Islamic State and to counter Iran’s influence.
WASHINGTON — After US Syria envoys said for months that the United States would stay in Syria indefinitely to prevent the return of the so-called Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS) and counter Iran’s influence, the State Department went virtually dark today after President Donald Trump said the US mission in Syria was done with the defeat of IS.
“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Trump tweeted.
“The president has been very clear in his declarations over the last two years, that the US is not going into Syria to resolve the Syria civil war,” a senior administration official, speaking not for attribution, told journalists on a White House call this afternoon. “What we were going in to do is destroy the territorial caliphate of the Islamic State in Syria.”
“We are under no illusions that ISIS writ large or the scourge of Sunni radical terrorism has in some way gone away,” the official said.
