MATTIS BLAMES IRAN: Mattis says if you want to understand why Syria has become such a complex mess, look no farther than Iran. Over the weekend, Israel conducted a series of airstrikes in Syria after it said a drone launched from an area under the control of Iran’s Quds Force had penetrated Israeli airspace. Things escalated quickly after an Israeli F-16 crashed after coming under fire from Syria’s air defenses. Israel responded with strikes against 12 sites, targeting both Syrian and Iranian controlled areas, and claimed to have taken out nearly half of Syria’s air defense network.

“It is interesting that everywhere we find trouble in the Middle East, you find the same thing behind it. Whether it be in Yemen or Beirut, or in Syria, in Iraq, you always find Iran engaged,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him to Rome for another meeting of the anti-Islamic State coalition. Syria, he said, provides the “throughput” for sophisticated weapons to be channeled through Iran’s Quds Force and their proxies, including the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Mattis said the U.S. had no involvement in the cross-border confrontation, but said Israel was well within its rights to respond to the drone incursion. “Israel has an absolute right to defend themselves. They don’t have to wait until their citizens are dying under attack before they actually address that issue.”

INCREASING COMPLEXITY: Mattis will be consulting with allies in Rome over what to do about Syria, which has become a more than 3-D chess problem. “It’s one of the most complex battlefields you could ever imagine. I mean, as soon as you think you could make it this complex it grows in complexity.” Mattis is trying to keep the focus on putting the final nail in the ISIS coffin while having to worry about “distractions” from NATO ally Turkey, which is waging it own war with proxy fighters in the north, as well as the Russians working to bolster the regime of Bashar Assad.

Some of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are splitting off to got back to their homes in the Afrin region to battle Turkish-backed fighters. “They see their fellow Kurds in Afrin under attack, so that is causing at least their attention to shift up there,” Mattis said. It’s not a significant number right now, he said, but it comes amid “tough fighting” in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. “The fight’s not over against ISIS. It’s not over. It goes on. There’s been tough fighting the last week with ISIS,” Mattis said.

WHAT’S THE PLAN: “What we are going to do is hold that territory and get it back in local leaders hands,” Mattis said. The U.S. is pinning all of its hopes on the U.N.-brokered peace process headed up by special envoy Staffan de Mistura in Geneva. The first task is to come up with a “post-conflict map and post-conflict plan,” Mattis said, to “assure that ISIS 2.0 doesn’t rise in the middle of all of that, and derail everything we’ve fought for.

“We don’t simply up and leave when most of the caliphate’s done, before the caliphate’s really finished, and leave the diplomats without a leg to stand on against people who have no diplomatic inclination,” Mattis said.

ABOUT THAT DRONE: Israel says the Iranian drone it shot down Saturday was a knockoff of an American design that Iran captured in 2011. A spokesman for the Israeli military said the aircraft was a copy of a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone, apparently reverse-engineered by Iran.

MOON GETS PERSONAL INVITE FROM KIM: In a meeting yesterday in South Korea’s Blue House, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hand-delivered an invitation to South Korea President Moon Jae-in to come to Pyongyang for talks. Moon has not yet indicated whether he will accept, and it’s yet another example of how Kim appears to be trying to split break South Korea from its 60-plus-year alliance with the U.S.

NO WEDGE: “I know that people are watching for a wedge between South Korea, Republic of Korea, in other words, and the United States. There’s no wedge there,” Mattis told reporters on his plane, and urged them not to read much into the Winter Olympic thaw between the two Koreas. “It’s too early to say. … If that’s going to have any traction once the Olympics are over.  We can’t say right now.”

PENCE: U.S. READY TO TALK: But Vice President Mike Pence, talking to the Washington Post en route back to Washington from the Olympics, indicated the U.S. would be willing to talk, but that sanctions would remain in force until North Korea shows it’s serious about denuclearization. “The point is, no pressure comes off until they are actually doing something that the alliance believes represents a meaningful step toward denuclearization,” Pence said. “So the maximum pressure campaign is going to continue and intensify. But if you want to talk, we’ll talk.”

ARMED SERVICES PANELS RAMP UP WORK: Both armed services committees in the House and Senate are planning a week packed with hearings. The panels are pushing ahead with work on the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act. At House Armed Services, lawmakers will spend Wednesday focusing on the U.S. military posture in the Pacific where a rising China looms and North Korea speeds ahead with its nuclear weapons program. Adm. Harry Harris, the leader of U.S. Pacific Command, will testify during that morning hearing. The committee will shift to the readiness of the Air Force in the afternoon, with testimony from Air Force, Air National Guard and Air Reserve brass.

On Thursday, House lawmakers hear from experts about strategic competition with China and look into the president’s FY19 special operations budget request with testimony by Gen. Raymond Thomas, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, and Owen West, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

ON THE SENATE SIDE: With its chairman Sen. John McCain still in Arizona battling brain cancer, Senate Armed Services will begin hearings this week with testimony Tuesday from experts on what the Defense Department should do to protect elections. On Wednesday, it brings in the service vice chiefs to take on the readiness of U.S. forces, a wide-ranging issue that will likely drive debate this year about hikes in defense spending. Testimony will include Gen. James McConville, the Army vice chief of staff; Adm. William Moran, vice chief of naval operations; Gen. Glenn Walters, assistant Marine Corps commandant; and Gen. Stephen Wilson, the Air Force vice chief of staff.

Also on Wednesday, the committee holds a hearing on personnel programs and military family readiness, with testimony from numerous officials including Robert Wilkie, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Its hearing Thursday looks at two combatant commands with testimony from Gen. Lori Robinson, the dual-hatted leader of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and Adm. Kurt Tidd, head of U.S. Southern Command.

NIGER REPORT COMING: The U.S. military’s investigation of last October’s deadly ambush in Niger, which claimed the live of four American soldiers and five Nigeriens, is complete, but not yet signed off on by Mattis. “That report is making its way to me. It’s not yet been sent to me. I would expect it as soon as the AFRICOM commander has reviewed it.” Mattis told reporters traveling with him. “I don’t expect it for a week or two.”

“It is extensive.  It is thousands of pages long. It looked into, not just into the specific incident, but into the broader circumstances surrounding that incident, so you get a holistic view,” Mattis said.

The New York Times reported last week that the draft of the report calls for the Pentagon to “scale back the number of ground missions in West Africa, and to strip commanders in the field of some authority to send troops on potentially high-risk patrols.”

THE AFGHANISTAN PLAN: Mattis is on a week-long European trip that will also take him to Brussels for a regularly scheduled NATO defense ministerial, and then end in Germany to attend the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy. While ISIS, Russia and Turkey will all be on the agenda at both meetings, the primary focus will be what’s happening in Afghanistan where the new U.S. strategy is to send more advisers and back up the Afghans with more U.S. airpower to compel the Taliban to lay down their arms and begin a process of reconciliation.

“All this is to drive them to the reconciliation table,” Mattis said. “Already we have had splinter groups and some people in the Taliban just since August, even before we got any reinforcements there, start talking more.”

A key part of the U.S. strategy is to make use of what used to be a winter lull in the fight to pound Taliban targets, and Mattis would like to see the NATO nations that are part of the coalition in Afghanistan do more, if they can. “What we need to do is make certain that the pre-fighting season efforts are fully engaged, brief everybody on those, what we’re doing, and then ensure that we’re all aligned with whose bringing in more troops.”

MEET ETIM: One sign of the changing nature of the war in Afghanistan is U.S. targeting of a little-known Chinese terrorists group operating along the country’s northern border. The U.S. sent a B-52 bomber this month to take out training camps that were used by both the Taliban and East Turkestan Islamic Movement. More about the terrorist group you may never have heard of here.

PAUL’S APPALLED: On “Face the Nation” yesterday, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul suggested President Trump is being bamboozled by his generals, and that he should rely more on his own instincts. “I think Donald Trump is probably the least interventionist-minded president we have had in a long time,” Paul said. “I think he’s not that excited about continuing the Afghan war forever. But the generals he has surrounded himself with don’t want to admit that there isn’t a military solution. And so the war goes on and on and on.

“I think the Afghan war is long past its mission. I think we killed and captured and disrupted the people who attacked us on 9/11 long ago. And I think now it’s a nation-building exercise. We’re spending $50 billion a year. And if the president really is serious about infrastructure, a lot of that money could be spent at home. Instead of building bridges and schools and roads in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, I think we could do that at home.”

THE RUNDOWN

New York Times: Kim Jong-un’s Sister Turns on the Charm, Taking Pence’s Spotlight

The Washington Post: Tillerson kicks off tense Middle East trip in Egypt

Fox News: CNN slammed for glowing puff piece about Kim Jong Un’s sister at Olympics

USA Today: Syria explained: Why other countries poked their noses in a tiny nation’s civil war

AP: A budget the likes of which the Pentagon has never seen

Aviation Week: USAF Plans To Retire B-2s, B-1s As B-21 Comes Online

Defense News: Army’s FY19 budget growing by 8 percent to fill readiness gaps, gradually grow force

Military.com: Marine Corps Quietly Drops Major Obstacle to Female Infantry Officers

Navy Times: US Navy pressing towards major reorg that could strip Pacific Fleet of authorities

USNI News: PACOM CO Harry Harris Tapped to be Ambassador to Australia; U.S. 5th Fleet CO to Pacific Fleet

Foreign Policy: Top Democrat’s Return Sows Uncertainty for Iran Deal

Politico: Military hawks win big in budget deal — for now

Wall Street Journal: NATO to Try ‘Kitchen Table’ to Soothe U.S.-Turkey Dispute

Defense One: Here’s How U.S.-North Korea Crises Typically End

Air Force Times: Air Force to kill JSTARS recap program for new battlefield management plane

Reuters: North Korea keeps mum on summit invite as its delegation completes South visit

Army Times: Meet the first Afghan Special Forces instructor pilot trained in-country