After his resignation, Jeffrey reveals a secret he kept from Trump regarding Syria
The resigning US envoy to Syria James Jeffrey revealed the true number of US military forces present in the regions of northern and eastern Syria.
Jeffrey said in an interview on Friday, that he and his colleagues have hidden from President Donald Trump the real number of his country’s forces in Syria, adding that the actual number is much more than the two hundred soldiers who Trump agreed to remain in Syria in 2019.
Jeffrey stated that, with each time, he and his colleagues used to put forward five arguments that would persuade Trump to keep the American forces in northeastern Syria, “and every time we succeeded in that, this is the real story”.
Jeffrey described his attempts to convince Trump about this matter as “the most controversial in the course of fifty years of his service”.
Jeffrey denied what US media reported, including the “New York Times”, about the true number of US forces in Syria, which it estimated at the time at about a thousand soldiers, but Jeffrey denied the number, considering that the number is top secret for quite a few of President Trump’s administration, he said.
Jeffrey’s speech coincides with a series of dismissals and appointments decisions in the US Department of Defense, the latest of which was Trump’s appointment of Christopher Miller as Secretary of Defense for the Agency, who in turn appointed Douglas MacGregor, who is known for his call for the withdrawal of US forces from northeastern Syria and Afghanistan.
On the other hand, Jeffrey praised Trump’s “rigid” policy in putting an end to quiet and burning conflicts in the Middle East, “which resulted in a situation that was the best that any American administration could hope to achieve in the midst of that region characterized by extreme volatility and constant chaos,” as he described it.
President Trump had previously announced at the end of 2018 the reduction of the US military presence in the regions of northeastern Syria, which sparked criticism from a number of US administration officials and exasperation by leaders of SDF militia.
But Trump quickly reversed his decision, ordering military reinforcements to be sent to northeast Syria.
