- President Donald Trump on Wednesday continued to claim that the US was "keeping the oil" in northern Syria, weeks after the US abruptly withdrew, and then deployed additional troops into the region to safeguard the natural resource.
- "So, we want to worry about our things," Trump added. "We're keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil."
- But Trump's sole justification for deploying US troops to Syria, taken at face-value, have conflicted with the Pentagon's.
- Trump's rhetoric and statements to "make a deal with an ExxonMobil ... to go in there" and "spread the wealth" have raised alarms with lawmakers and former diplomats.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday continued to claim that the US was "keeping the oil" in northern Syria, weeks after the US abruptly withdrew, and then deployed additional troops into the region to safeguard the natural resource.
"As you know, we've pulled back our troops quite a while ago, because I think it's time for us not to be worried about other people's borders," Trump said to reporters alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the White House. "I want to worry about our borders."
"So, we want to worry about our things," Trump added. "We're keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil."
The president and his congressional supporters have publicly fixated on Syria's oil reserves, which has significantly declined since 2011, and contains about 2.5 billion barrels worth of crude oil - about 100 times less than nearby Saudi Arabia, and 59 times less than Iraq.
Following Trump's decision to withdraw US troops in Syria amid the Turkish offensive into the country in October, Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, protested the decision and reportedly launched a campaign to convince the president to retain some forces in the area. One of the reported reasons to keep US troops in the country was for the protection of the oil reserves, and Trump has adopted that as the sole reason for keeping troops in Syria.
Former senior US military officials and foreign policy experts have also warned that the abrupt withdrawal would undo many of the gains made in the coalition's mission to counter an ISIS resurgence - or give the impression US policy towards the Middle East is solely concerned with control the region's resources.
But Trump's sole justification for deploying US troops to Syria, taken at face-value, have conflicted with the Pentagon's.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the majority-Kurdish forces that led the ground assault against ISIS with US assistance, have operated the oil fields after seizing them from the terrorist group in 2017. Two years earlier, the oil fields were producing 45,000 barrels a day, or $1.5 million worth, the Pentagon said earlier in November.
The SDF has been since been selling the crude oil to the Syrian regime through a sanctioned broker, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said that by supporting the SDF's revenue stream, the US was continuing to wage war against ISIS, which thereby justified the increased troop presence.
"The legal basis for this comes under the commander in chief's authority for us to be conducting counterterrorism efforts against [the Defeat-ISIS mission]," Hoffman said to reporters last week. "And I get your point when you're trying to decouple the ISIS issue from the Syria issue, but it is not a decoupled issue. Our efforts in the area are focused on our ... mission, and we'll continue with that."
Previous statements from US Navy Rear Adm. William Byrne, the vice director of the Joint Staff, appeared to directly rebuff Trump's statements.
"I would be cautious with saying that 'the mission to secure the oil fields,'" Byrne said in response to a reporter's question last week. "The mission is the defeat of ISIS. The securing of the oil fields is a subordinate task to that mission, and the purpose of that task is to deny ISIS the revenues from that oil infrastructure."
Trump's rhetoric and statements to "make a deal with an ExxonMobil ... to go in there" and "spread the wealth" have concerned lawmakers and former diplomats.
"Being candid, it seems like a totally screwed-up state of affairs, in which the messaging on stuff like that is being driven not by any audience abroad," Joshua Geltzer, a former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council and a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said at a public panel on Thursday.
"So the messaging has to tie that presence to the oil field because of what I gather is the president's own view of what's in US national-security interest there," Geltzer added. "That then runs headlong into the messaging problem that creates globally but also questions about law and propriety that, if it's sincere, it raises."