U.S. Main Goal Was Denying Assad Territory

Trump’s Former Syria Envoy Reveals

WASHINGTON (Kayhan Intl.) – Jim Jeffrey, the veteran U.S. diplomat who served as Trump’s special envoy for Syria for nearly two years prior to his November 13 resignation, has offered another frank admission about the real goal of the U.S. mission in the war-torn nation – preventing President Bashar Assad’s government from restoring control over territory within the Arab Republic’s internationally-recognized borders.
In an interview with the Times of Israel, Jeffrey indicated that while the Trump administration had failed to achieve its goal of securing a complete withdrawal of ‘Iranian forces’ from Syria, or the complete destruction of Daesh, or a resolution to the Syrian conflict, it did manage to reach a "military stalemate,” denying Damascus control over part of its lands.
"What we have done is stop Assad’s forward movement militarily. There is a basic military statement,” Jeffrey said. He added that Turkish forces in northern Syria were similarly ‘denying terrain’ to Damascus, while the Zionist regime "dominates the skies” and continues to launch regular and illegal sorties into the country.
Jeffrey also boasted that the U.S.-led coalition and its European allies have "crushed Assad economically.”
Jeffrey, who had joined 50 other Republican national security officials in signing a 2016 appeal suggesting that Trump was dangerous and should not be allowed to become president before ultimately agreeing to serve in his administration in 2018, credited former CIA director-turned Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for convincing Trump to stay in Syria.
Reacting to the Jeffrey interview, Syrian Arab News Agency contributor Ruaa al-Jazaeri suggested that the ex-envoy had effectively revealed that the "real goal of the U.S. administration” has been "keeping its occupying forces in some of the Syrian areas”, discrediting the "fake slogans which claim that those forces are fighting the Daesh terrorist organization”.
"Jeffrey’s admission is added to the admission made by Donald Trump, who has announced at many press conferences that his occupying forces which are deployed in Syria are there to protect the oil fields which have been pillaged by the U.S. in collusion with the [Kurdish] militia,” al-Jazaeri added.
Jeffrey’s comments to the Times of Israel follow remarks he made to Defense One last month, in which he frankly admitted that he and his staff "were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had” in Syria. "What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,” the diplomat said, referring to Trump’s repeated plans in 2018 and again in 2019 to bring U.S. troops home after announcing that the terrorists had been defeated.
According to Jeffrey, the U.S. continues to have "a lot more” than the estimated 200-400 troops approved by Trump in Syria at present.