A U.S. Air Force B-52 refuels during an anti-ISIS mission in 2017. Air Force / Senior Airman Jordan Castelan
US strikes ISIS in Syria as Assad regime falls
“The future here will be written by Syrians,” a White House official told reporters.
U.S. military aircraft struck 75 ISIS-related targets in Syria on Sunday, just hours after the government of Bashar Al-Assad fell to rebel forces, according to the White House.
“ISIS has been trying to reconstitute in this broad area known as the Badiya desert,” a White House senior official told reporters on background. “We have worked to make sure they cannot do that. So when they try to camp there, when they try to train, which we do, we take them out, something.”
The strikes were executed by B-52s, F-15s, A-10s, and other Air Force assets, the official said.
On Saturday, outgoing National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the United States will continue to play some role in the country, where it has since 2014 deployed troops to fight ISIS.
“There are three things we have to be particularly focused on,” Sullivan said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. “One: that the fighting in Syria not lead to the resurgence of ISIS, and we are going to take steps ourselves, directly and working with the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurds, to ensure that does not happen.
“Two: that our friends in the region, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, others who border Syria, or who would potentially face spillover effects from Syria, are strong and secure,” he said. “Three: that this does not lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.”
The White House official said Assad has been offered asylum by his longtime backers in Moscow, but his current whereabouts are unknown. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the main rebel group, had some early links to ISIS and the United States designated it as a terrorist organization in 2018.
The White House official said that over the course of the days, senior administration officials will be in the region, “maintaining the mission against ISIS, helping ensure stability in East Syria, protecting our personnel from any threats, but most importantly, engaging with all Syrian groups to establish and help wherever we can transition away from the Assad regime towards an independent sovereign Syria.”
They said the United States was proactively involved with multiple groups in Syria and partners in the region. “I just want to emphasize the future here will be written by Syrians. We are not coming up with a blueprint from Washington for the future of Syria is written by Syrians,” the official said.
The United States is also concerned about Assad’s arsenal of chemical weapons. “There’s a number of efforts going on in that regard, including some of our partners in the region who have been engaged. So that’s something that we’re very much focused on,” the official said, but indicated that it was unlikely the United States would need to deploy additional assets to Syria to deal with them.