America is Playing with Fire in Syria - The American Conservative

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : However, the success of maximum pressure hinges on the sanctions' power to change regime behavior and align the regime's self-interest with that of the U.S., and U.S. pressure has succeeded only in consolidating popular support for the regimes in Iran and Syria and garnering resentment of Western intervention, rather than eroding domestic support.
45% : Additionally, a drawdown in U.S. forces can signal to Iran in good faith that this relentless maximum pressure campaign is capable of being lifted, should they return to the nuclear deal.
39% : Last week, U.S. officials announced they believed Iran and their proxy forces were responsible for the drone attack on the U.S. military outpost at al-Tanf in southeast Syria, where roughly 200 American troops are based.
38% : While the official U.S. position for housing troops in al-Tanf is to combat ISIS at the border, a simple roadmap shows that the al-Tanf base serves a singular purpose: to add to the U.S. maximum pressure campaign against Iran.
35% : To pretend that Assad's gains and Syria's relations with Iran and Russia can be undone by a minimal and lackluster U.S. presence is naïve and dangerous.
35% : While U.S. officials have historically remained coy about the anti-Iranian objectives of the base, National Security Advisor John Bolton described al-Tanf in 2019 as "still very strategically important in connection with our determination that Iran not achieve this arc of control stretching from Iran through Iraq into Lebanon and Syria."
33% : Located strategically on the Baghdad-Damascus highway, the 55 kilometer deconfliction zone surrounding the garrison blocks the Iraq-Syria border, making it more difficult for Iran to transport resources and weapons to their proxy forces in Syria.

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