Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime is “unambiguously violat[ing]” a ceasefire deal brokered by President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Ambassador Nikki Haley.
“The Syrian regime’s violations of the ceasefire in southwest Syria need to stop,” Haley, the Trump administration’s top representative at the United Nations, said Friday.
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Trump and Putin established the “de-escalation zone” following a July 2017 meeting, but the Assad regime — having recaptured rebel-held territory in the adjacent region of Damascus — has launched a new offensive. The decision brings regime forces closer to American troops, who are encamped in a position along the Syrian-Iraq-Jordan borders that Assad’s Iranian partners want to control.
“Syrian government forces have reportedly encircled a U.S. military base at the al-Tanf border crossing with Jordan,” according Iran’s PressTV, a state-run outlet, reported Friday. “Tensions have been running high between American and Syrian forces in the region following several US airstrikes on positions of pro-government forces.”
American special forces are holding the border crossing of al-Tanf. That post allows the U.S. to prevent Iran from controlling a land corridor through Iraq and Syria to its terrorist proxies in Lebanon. There have been reports that Trump would agree to withdraw from the border crossing if Iranian forces exited southern Syria, but that deal has not come to fruition; meanwhile, Israel wants Iranian forces to depart Syria entirely.
“Iran has to withdraw from all of Syria,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday. “We will take action — and are already taking action — against efforts to establish a military presence by Iran and its proxies in Syria both close to the border and deep inside Syria.”
Israel might not be the only military to take action, if Assad’s offensive continues. “We expect Russia to do its part to respect and enforce the ceasefire it helped establish, and to use the influence it has to stop the Syrian regime’s violations and any further destabilizing actions in the southwest and throughout Syria,” Haley said. “Russia will ultimately bear responsibility for any further escalations in Syria.”
