The U.S. is withdrawing all forces from Syria

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Have never understood why we were there in the first place.

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WASHINGTON—The U.S. is in the process of withdrawing all of its roughly 1,000 troops from Syria, according to three American officials, ending a decadelong military operation in the country.

The U.S. military already completed its withdrawals from the Al Tanf garrison, a strategic outpost at the borders of Syria, Jordan and Iraq, and the Al-Shaddadi base in northeast Syria earlier this month, two of the officials said. Troops will withdraw from the remaining U.S. locations over the next two months, the officials said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the U.S. was weighing a complete withdrawal from Syria in January.

The officials said the withdrawal was unrelated to the current U.S. deployment of naval and air forces in the Middle East for potential strikes against Iran if talks about that country’s nuclear program fail. Iran has threatened to retaliate against American troops in the region if the U.S. launches airstrikes.

The U.S. has amassed a large force off Iran’s coast consisting of a carrier strike group, advanced jet fighters and other warships. A second aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is heading toward Iran.

The Trump administration has decided that a U.S. military presence in Syria is no longer necessary, two U.S. officials said, because of the near-total disbandment of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the main U.S. partner in countering Islamic State in Syria for the past decade.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s forces took over most Kurdish-held territory in a lightning offensive last month. Damascus and the SDF reached a fragile U.S.-backed cease-fire in January, and the SDF has agreed to integrate into the Syrian army.

The Trump administration aims to build a larger diplomatic presence in Syria following the consolidation of power by Sharaa, who in late 2024 overthrew dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met last week with his Syrian counterpart, Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, largely to seek Damascus’s support in fighting terrorist groups such as Islamic State and maintaining a cease-fire with the SDF.

Another reason for the troop withdrawal is to reduce the risk of friction with Sharaa’s army, which is riddled with jihadist sympathizers, including soldiers with ties to al Qaeda and Islamic State, and others who have been involved in alleged war crimes against the Kurdish and Druze minorities, the Journal previously reported.

In December, two U.S. soldiers and an American civilian interpreter were killed by a member of the Syrian security forces who was set to be fired for holding extremist views.

A senior administration official said that a pullout was under way because the Syrian government was taking the lead on counterterrorism operations, though U.S. forces would still be able to respond to any Islamic State-related threats in the region. A representative for U.S. Central Command declined to comment.

Some American and foreign officials are concerned a weakened U.S. military presence in Syria could make it easier for Damascus to break its cease-fire with the SDF while also leaving space for Islamic State to flourish. But other officials said the small number of remaining U.S. forces were more of a political signal of support for Kurds and the new Syrian government than a potent counterterrorism force.

It isn’t the first time that Trump has pulled U.S. forces out of Syria. In 2018, during his first term as president, he abruptly ordered all of the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops out of the country after declaring military victory against Islamic State, stating that Turkey—a staunch opponent of the Kurds in Syria—could fill the American vacuum. Trump’s decision met with stiff resistance from within the administration and prompted then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to resign.

Trump ultimately left a few hundred troops in the country to protect oil fields in hopes of seizing Syria’s crude for the U.S. But Jim Jeffrey, Trump’s Syria envoy at the time, later said in an interview with Defense One that administration members were “always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.”

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