Airstrikes in Syria

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: American airstrikes in Syria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Last week, the United States responded to rocket attacks on American troops on bases in northeastern Syria. This development deserves our attention even as the war in Ukraine continues to dominate headlines.

Joining us to talk about it is David Adesnik. He served in the U.S. Department of Defense and has devoted years to research on Syria and Iran. Today he is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

REICHARD: David, good morning.

DAVID ADESNIK, GUEST: Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

REICHARD: What happened in Syria to prompt American airstrikes last week? The who, what, and why?

ADESNIK: Well, it’s an ongoing situation where Iran and its proxies have continually launched strikes at the American presence in northeast Syria and at one other base in a different part of the country. They, of course, don't want us there. Their client—Bashar Al Assad—is, of course, the dictator who presides over what's left of the state after a civil war in which his regime was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. And specifically, I think the Iranians would like to present this as retaliation for Israel striking Iranian assets inside Syria. And there's been an ongoing Israeli campaign because Iran sees Syria as a launchpad for future attacks on Israel, and even some current attacks on Israel. But it decided this time to retaliate against the U.S. And the U.S. responded to that retaliation.

REICHARD: And who specifically are we talking about? Who are the parties here?

ADESNIK: Right, so that's one of the questions that remains a little shadowy. Iran has a wide network of proxies in the region, a range of militias, a lot of them sort of based in Iraq, active in Iraq politically, and they may be the ones doing this, you know, there are indications that the drones may have flown from Iraq, but a lot remains uncertain.

REICHARD: Let’s back up and understand what policy the Biden administration is following here?

ADESNIK: Sure, so the biggest change from Trump to Biden was that Donald Trump himself personally wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. For him, it was one of the endless wars he wanted to end. Although Syria in a lot of ways is very different. We never had a big troop presence there, several thousand at the most. And it was it was a campaign we really fought through others, through our partners—Syrian Arabs and Syrian Kurds—who helped defeat the Islamic State or ISIS, whose caliphate or state had headquarters, its capital in Syria, and we fought a campaign there to dismantle it. And once that campaign was over, Trump wanted to pull out. The difference is that many people—and I would agree with the following assessment—believe that if you don't keep some prisons there, keep training our allies, keep pushing down on the remnants of the Islamic State, it will come back. And they've showed signs of that. There was a major prison break they launched. But anyway, the main driver behind the U.S. presence in northeast Syria with about 900 troops is to prevent ISIS from reemerging and to train those who can keep it down.

REICHARD: I know President Biden wants to restart the nuclear deal with Iran that President Trump put a stop to in 2018. And European leaders right now are trying to renegotiate Iran’s nuclear capabilities. How do we make sense of the airstrikes in Syria - a response to the Iran backed Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s actions there- in light of that?

ADESNIK: Sure, so in general the United States has been very wary of explicitly linking the situation in Syria or policy in Syria to the Iran nuclear deal. And it was the same under the Obama administration. Basically, we don't want to say we are either going soft on Assad, or that we are letting Iran manipulate the country in order to facilitate a nuclear deal.

REICHARD: Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl said the U.S. airstrikes illustrates US commitment to push back against Iran’s support for terrorism. Does that seem consistent with the other policy goals of this administration?

ADESNIK: In theory, it is. So as part of the nuclear agreement, the administration is under pressure to show that it won't go soft on other areas. The biggest flashpoint was when Iran was demanding that we lifted terrorism designation on its Revolutionary Guard as [part of the] deal. And what they're saying is they want us to lift that designation even though they're not going to stop engaging in terrorism and a range of activities that support terrorism by supporting Hamas, by supporting Hezbollah, the Lebanese organization. And therefore critics are saying—and I think there's a lot to this—we're trying to cut this deal with Iran even though they're a state sponsor of terrorism, officially designated, and are going to continue to perpetrate these activities throughout the region. So what you're hearing from Kahl is an effort to say, look, we want to negotiate on this one area, the nuclear, and we're going to do some pushback on the other areas, like them firing rockets at our bases.

REICHARD: David, what do you wish Americans understood about this situation?

ADESNIK: Well, I think the basic understanding of why there is a U.S. presence and military presence in Syria in the first place, and we understand that the American population has seen, obviously, a manifest failure in Afghanistan. In Iraq because of the withdrawal that was completed in 2011 and the Islamic State had a chance to come back. And of course, everyone remembers the casualties the United States suffered. But what they need to understand is how different Syria has been over the past eight years. And it's sort of remarkable to think of it that way, that we've now been operating militarily in Syria for eight years to keep the or to put the Islamic State down and to keep it down. Thousands and thousands of Syrian allies of ours have given their lives on the battlefield to fight the Islamic State and we've supported them with special forces, with surveillance, with airpower so that fewer than 10 Americans have lost their lives in combat, according to Pentagon numbers, as part of this counter terror mission in Syria. And the other thing is, we've learned a lesson. If you mostly get the terrorists down, but not out and then you walk away, they come back. That's what we learned in Iraq. It's partially the lesson in Afghanistan. We've seen it in some signs of resurgence in Syria. So people should understand there's a rationale for having American troops there. Some people want to say, why are they there? They're sitting ducks. Iraq can take cheap shots at them. And they should remember that broader context.

REICHARD: David Adesnik is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. David, thank you.

ADESNIK: My pleasure.

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