US envoy to Syria James Jeffrey is struggling to stake out a position on Iran’s presence in Syria, whether it is changing, and why that might be happening. This began with claims from Israeli officials last week that they believe Iran is withdrawing from Syria because of all the Israeli attacks recently.
Jeffrey almost immediately chimed in to throw doubt into that, saying the US saw no evidence of Iran making changes to their commitments in Syria, and that Israel might force them briefly out of some areas, but there was broadly no change.
In new comments on Tuesday, Jeffrey flipped his entire narrative, not mentioning Israel at all, claiming Iran is scaling back its presence in Syria significant, and then claiming that it is thanks to President Trump’s sanctions against them.
It’s difficult to prove or disprove any of this, since the claims of “Iranians in Syria” rests heavily on other Shi’ite militias being misidentified, and Iran maintains they only have a small number of advisers in the country.
Yep, typical damned if you do/don’t scenario. Iran’s normal good behavior will be attributed to our immoral sanctions, so behaving properly does not benefit them.
Iran, unlike us, always said that they are their on invitation of the Syrian govt and will leave when no longer needed. Why would they want to stay in Syria for 19yrs like we have in Afghanistan.
Amazing. The envoy does a 180 and gives the sanctions the credit for Iran now supposedly scaling back their Syrian commitments. Sure, and I bet there was no pressure for him to do so. The man must look in the mirror and be proud to be able to stand without a spine.