Washington:
President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States should not get involved in the Syrian conflict, where rebels threaten President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
In a post on his social media, President Trump said: “Syria is a mess, but it is not our friend. America should not be involved in it. This is not our fight. Leave it alone. Get caught up in it. No!” he said. Media platform Truth Social.
Trump said Assad’s ally Russia, tied up in a war with Ukraine, “seems unable to stop this literal march through Syria, a country we have protected for years.”
President Trump said that if Russia were forced out of Syria, “it might actually be the best thing that could happen to Russia” because “there was no benefit for Russia in Syria.”
President Trump’s comments come as about 900 U.S. troops are in Syria, most of them in the northeast, and the U.S. military has joined forces with the Syrian Kurdish-led alliance to stop the resurgence of Islamic State militants. It seems to reflect opposition to the support of
During his first term in 2018, President Trump announced that he wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from the Islamic State, saying it was close to defeat.
But he held off because his advisers warned that a withdrawal would leave Iran and Russia to fill the void.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
