US Is Pulling All Troops From Syria

America's fairly quiet presence in one Middle East country is about to end. US officials tell the Wall Street Journal all of the roughly 1,000 American troops still in Syria are being pulled out over the next two months, winding down a decade-long mission against the Islamic State. Some positions along the Syria-Jordan-Iraq border and in northeast Syria have already been vacated, with the Pentagon describing the drawdown as "conditions-based" and theoretically reversible if ISIS regroups. The US troops have been in Syria since 2015 to counter ISIS presence, the BBC reports.

The move hands far more responsibility to President Ahmed al-Sharaa's government, which toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2024 and has since absorbed the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces into its ranks under a fragile, US-backed truce. That new partnership worries some US and foreign officials, who point to jihadist sympathizers and alleged war criminals in Sharaa's army—and to a December insider attack that killed two American soldiers and an interpreter. The administration says it will lean more on diplomacy and regional capabilities while keeping the option to hit ISIS from outside Syria, the Hill reports. The shift is not tied to a separate US military buildup around Iran, officials say, even as Washington sends a second aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, toward Iranian waters.