The announcement today by CENTCOM that it is vacating its presence at the Al-Tanf military base in southeast Syria is welcome news. US troops at Al-Tanf served no strategic purpose for the United States and needlessly endangered the lives of American servicemembers. The United States has limited interests at stake in Syria, which are best served by eliminating the remaining US military presence in the country.
The US military presence in Syria is a remnant of the counter-Islamic State (ISIS) mission initiated by Barack Obama. Despite the destruction of ISIS’s so-called “caliphate” in 2019, US troops have remained in Syria indefinitely, namely because, as former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford noted, the “real (but unstated) reason the US is there is to block Iran from using a road coming from Iraq into Syria.”
Despite plans by President Donald Trump to withdraw troops from Syria during his first administration following the collapse of ISIS, America’s military presence remained, thanks in part to efforts by the Pentagon to sabotage a withdrawal. The Biden administration maintained this presence, despite these troops coming under increased attack as a result of America’s support for Israel following Hamas’s terror attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. At Al-Tanf specifically, Iranian-backed groups killed three US servicemembers in January 2024. More recently, ISIS killed three Americans in Palmyra, Syria—two US soldiers and one civilian contractor—marking the first US casualties in the country since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
Trump’s decision to pull US troops from Al-Tanf is the right call. Syria remains rife with internal divisions and plagued by an array of competing external actors trying to advance their own agendas after Assad’s removal. The US military presence in Syria has no legal authorization or a clear and achievable mission. Maintaining a US military presence in Syria is not only strategic malpractice but also a direct affront to the lives of American troops.
Removing the US troops from Al-Tanf is a step in the right direction. Trump should go further, bringing the remaining troops in Syria home.