By Roberto García Hernández on July 6, 2018
The most recent threats of the United States against Syria seem to announce an even more invasive policy by the White House against that Arab nation, despite the lack of a defined strategy in that regard.
The campaign is based on, among other things, the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, allegations that have been rejected by not just by Syria but also many countries and researchers who consider it without any merit or evidence to back the claim up. Russia considers it a false flag and a pretext for an expansion of the war.
Last April 6, the U.S. Navy destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross, located in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the Sheyrat air base in the province of Homs, killing scores and causing damage to facilities on the base.
On June 18, a U.S. F/A-18 fighter-bomber shot down a Syrian SU-22 military aircraft northeast of Syria, and two days later, an F-15 destroyed an Iranian remote-controlled aircraft, the second such attack in the last 15 days.
As complement to these actions, Israeli fighter planes have attacked several times in recent days Syrian positions in Quneitra, in the countries southern region, in open support to the so-called Army for the Liberation of the Levant a known terrorist group.
The Israeli attack took place in the Golan Heights zone that has been occupied since 1967, located 80 kilometers southeast of Damascus.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon keeps increasing its land soldiers northeast of Syria, mainly Special Operations Forces, with the pretext of the battling against the Islamic State It is a zone that, according to the Military Times, has become a mine field where the risk of a much wider war grows with each passing day.
High ranking U.S. officials, who have chosen to remain anonymous, recently stated to AP news agency that there are divisions within the Trump Administration regarding weather to stop Assad’s army who are attacking Islamic State or not.
However, Colonel Ryan Dillon, speaker of the coalition led by the United States, thinks Al Assad’s units should fill the void in territory that the fundamentalist retreat from.
Pentagon officials reiterated that in recent days the Islamic State and not the Syrian army is the main target of U.S. military actions in Syria, unless the local units threaten the security of U.S. troops and their allies.
In this context, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the White House does not intend to get directly involved in actions of what he called Syria’s civil war and he admitted that military operations in Syria are becoming increasingly complex.
That complexity is due to the geographical proximity of all the parties involved in the conflict. On one side there are the Syrian, Iranian and Russian forces and on the other is the U.S. troops and the armed bands of terrorists they support.
It is a scenario that is playing out that makes it more difficult for the Washington led coalition’s air forces to make precise bombings against the Islamic Army’s groups or units of the Syrian army without causing damage to its own forces in the battlefield or to the civilian population.
At this point President Donald Trump has no defined strategy in the war against Syria. This of course is despite his election promises to not become involved in the Syrian conflict while the reality is that he is headed in the opposite direction
Meanwhile, the debate in U.S. political circles is still focused on whether Congress should authorize Trump to carry out actions of greater magnitude against Syria despite such plan would be in complete and flagrant violation of international law.
Source: Prensa Latina