The United States will strengthen its military presence in eastern Syria with “mechanized forces” to prevent America’s enemies from accessing oil fields and revenues.
During a summit of Defense Ministers of NATO member states held over the weekend U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper stated that “Ultimately, we always intended – as the (U.S.) President (Donald Trump) directed – to maintain a presence at the Al-Tanf garrison. As I’ve said over the past several days, we’re also considering how we might reposition forces in the area in order to ensure we secure the oil fields. We are now taking some actions – I am not going to get into the details – to strengthen our position at Deir al-Zor to ensure that we can deny ISIS access to the oil fields because we want to make sure that they don’t have access to the resources that may allow them to strike within the region, to strike Europe, to strike the United States.”
A pentagon official confirmed to TV7 that a so-called “residual force” will remain in the Eastern part of Syria, to properly secure the referred to oil-fields from potential attacks – not only from the Islamic State, but potentially from Russian-backed or Iran-backed forces operating in the country.