How Trump Thwarted Calculated Israeli Effort to Keep U.S. in Syria

[Right_in_Virginia]

How Trump Thwarted Calculated Israeli Effort to Keep U.S. in Syria
American Conservative, Jan 14, 2019, Gareth Porter

The Pentagon was not the only party pressing Donald Trump to keep troops in Syria last year. It turns out the Israeli government and its supporters in Washington were working very hard to get the Trump administration to use America’s military presence there to support an Israeli campaign of airstrikes aimed at threatening war with Iran.

The Israeli strategy was aimed at dividing Russia from Iran and thus putting pressure on Tehran to withdraw its military personnel from Syria. A campaign by a pro-Israel think tank actually succeeded in getting such a policy ready for Trump’s approval last fall—although it was not supported by some Pentagon officials.

The story of the Israel lobby’s latest attempt to capture American policy, recounted here for the first time, reveals just how far Israel was able to reach into the Trump administration before the president personally intervened.


Read more:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-the-israeli-effort-to-keep-trump-in-syria-failed/

[TomSea]

A senior administration official said the United States would continue to pursue the withdrawal of Iranian-backed forces from Syria and a political solution in that country. He said the United States was leaving a contingent of American troops at the Al Tanf base in south-central Syria, as a deterrent to Iranian movements in that region.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/us/politics/bolton-iran-pentagon.html

So, in a manner of speaking,  TAC may well be wrong.

Coming from the American Conservative, I almost have to wonder if there is an anti-Israel slant and guess what?   Or it could as easily be about the Saudis, TAC will be anti-intervention. I don't wish to cast them in a negative light, just the facts.