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President Donald Trump<\/span> announced that his administration intends to lift wide-ranging sanctions on Syria during a speech on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Syria, which has seen so much misery and death, there is a new government that will hopefully will succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,\u201d Trump said<\/a>. \u201cI will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.\u201d\u00a0Trump said that Syria deserves \u201ca fresh start<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n That new beginning does not, however, include an end to the U.S. occupation of Syrian territory, according to the Pentagon. Around 1,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in the country.<\/p>\n The U.S. military has been operating in Syria<\/a> for many years as part of its complex and often muddled military efforts in the region. America\u2019s bases ostensibly exist to conduct \u201ccounter-ISIS missions<\/a>,\u201d but experts say they are also as a check against Iran. The outposts have come under frequent attack<\/a> in recent years and have also been targeted for thefts by militias and criminal gangs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Late last year, the government of Bashar al-Assad was toppled <\/a>after a rapid offensive by rebel forces led by Syria\u2019s current interim president, Ahmed al-Shara. Last month, reports emerged<\/a> that the U.S. was shuttering three of its eight small outposts in Syria.<\/p>\n Experts say that withdrawing U.S. troops from a handful of bases in Syria is now long overdue <\/a>and necessary to effect a real change in strategy and policy for the region.<\/p>\n \u201cOver 1,000 U.S. troops remain stuck in Syria without a clear mission or timetable to return.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cLifting sanctions on Syria is a positive step \u2014 but sanctions aren\u2019t the only holdover policy from the Assad days that the U.S. should revisit,\u201d said Rosemary Kelanic, the director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates for more restrained U.S. foreign policy. \u201cOver 1,000 U.S. troops remain stuck in Syria without a clear mission or timetable to return. They\u2019re a legacy of the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but that would-be \u2018caliphate\u2019 was defeated and lost all its territory over 5 years ago. It\u2019s time for those troops to come home.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked if the U.S. was planning a withdrawal of forces from Syria, a Pentagon spokesperson referred The Intercept to an April statement<\/a> that announced \u201cthe U.S. footprint in Syria\u201d would drop \u201cdown to less than a thousand U.S. forces in the coming months,\u201d but would not end entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department of Defense continues to maintain a significant amount of capability in the region and the ability to make dynamic force posture adjustments based on evolving security situations on the ground,\u201d the statement reads.<\/p>\n On Wednesday,\u00a0Trump spoke for about half an hour with al-Shara, whom he called a \u201cyoung, attractive guy<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0Trump also referred to the Syrian president\u2019s \u201cstrong past\u201d and called him a \u201cfighter.\u201d Al-Shara is designated as a terrorist<\/a> by the U.S. government for his former affiliation with Al Qaeda<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump also encouraged al-Shara to \u201ctell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria\u201d; help the U.S. prevent the resurgence of ISIS; and sign on to the Abraham Accords, a 2020 Trump-brokered pact that established formal ties between Israel and four Arab countries, among other recommendations, according<\/a> to a statement on X by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.<\/p>\n Fear of an ISIS revival has been the long-standing argument<\/a> for keeping U.S. troops in Syria<\/a>. Kelanic pointed to the recent history of Afghanistan as an argument against claims that the U.S. needs to have boots on the ground to counter any ISIS resurgence.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big argument against the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was that we would see a resurgence of terrorism from al-Qaeda or ISIS. But the U.S hasn\u2019t been targeted by terrorism from Afghanistan,\u201d Kelanic\u00a0told The Intercept. \u201cThe U.S. has detected plots by ISIS-Khorasan, which operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Iran and Russia and warned those countries ahead of time. We\u2019re able to still detect what\u2019s going on with extremely sophisticated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities without having boots on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House did not respond for a request for comment concerning the continued U.S. troop presence in Syria.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n