Image Source: Military Times
Since the start of the Gaza Crisis nearly two months ago, Iranian-backed proxies have subjected approximately 3,400 American troops in Iraq and Syria to an almost constant barrage of attacks. At a time when the United States is deploying considerable additional forces to the Middle East in hopes of deterring a wider regional conflict, its ground presence in Iraq and Syria is increasingly at odds with this objective. U.S. military presence has become a net liability without a clearly achievable military mission. Nevertheless, U.S. policy tolerates threats to servicemembers, empowering adversaries in the region to impose costs on any actions the United States takes to further its interests while also making a slide into regional war more likely. Previous U.S. objectives that led to these deployments, such as countering ISIS, supporting humanitarian operations, and competing against great power rivals, are better served through alternative strategies that do not require permanent ground forces in Iraq and Syria.
The Scale of Attacks
Despite Pentagon claims in November that U.S. deterrence in the Middle East is working, more than 73 separate attacks have been launched on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since October 17, as of this writing. Ongoing U.S. retaliatory strikes have not stopped these attacks, which injured more than 62 American servicemembers, including at least 27 who incurred potentially life-altering traumatic brain injuries. In a recent escalatory step, a November 20 attack on al-Asad air base in Iraq featured the use of a short-range ballistic missile by Iranian proxies. That attack marked the first time this weapon class was used against U.S. forces since the aftermath of the airstrike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qassem Soleimani, an event that nearly resulted in war with Iran.
While the United States should reserve the right to repel and retaliate against these attacks, it is unclear whether doing so is restoring any kind of deterrence. That U.S. forces deployed an AC-130 gunship to repel the al-Asad attack, for example, did not stop Iranian proxies from attacking U.S. forces a further four separate occasions on Thanksgiving Day alone.
Flawed Rationales
The principal arguments for continuing an open-ended U.S. ground presence in Iraq or Syria are not connected enough to core U.S. security interests to warrant their increasing risks.
Since the Biden Administration announced the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq in December 2021, U.S. forces have been deployed in a “train, advise, and assist” (TAA) mission supporting Iraqi security forces. Though the TAA deployment intends to strengthen the institutions of the Iraqi state and counter Iranian influence, the U.S. deployment risks being actively counterproductive. The Inspectors General overseeing Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. mission in Iraq and Syria, acknowledged ties between Iranian-backed groups such as the Popular Mobilization Forces and several units of the Iraqi military and police forces.
In practice, this means that U.S. troops are training security forces with factions all too willing to support or even supply the very groups carrying out attacks on American forces in the first place. The U.S. TAA mission in Iraq has not eliminated ties between pro-Iranian militias and Iraqi security forces, but it does offer Iran the means to cheaply impose costs on the United States for pursuing other policy goals, such as assisting Israel during its campaign against Hamas.
The U.S. mission in Syria is similarly rudderless and risky. Though the American deployment to Syria originated as a counter-ISIS mission, the group’s territorial “caliphate” was eliminated years ago. Where U.S. support of operations to destroy ISIS’ territorial holdings had clearly achievable objectives, long-term deployments of U.S. troops to prevent ISIS’ “enduring defeat” do not.
Regardless of their relations with the United States, all regional powers share an interest in preventing ISIS’ return in their own region and should take primary responsibility for continuing to suppress any of its attempts to reconstitute.
The United States retains an unparalleled capability to launch over-the-horizon strikes against credible terrorist threats. U.S. forces repeatedly demonstrated this capability in strikes against Osama bin Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and several successors, and the previous leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Qasim al-Raymi, which did not require permanent ground deployments in-country to execute. U.S. Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR)-Strike capabilities do not require ground troops in vulnerable, isolated positions, such as the al-Tanf garrison in southern Syria, in order to be credible and effective. Absent ground troops in Iraq and Syria, the United States could still rely on an extensive array of basing options for over-the-horizon strikes, including air and naval bases in Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
Another justification for U.S. forces in Syria, particularly those at al-Tanf, has been that their presence allegedly disrupts Iranian regional influence by interdicting their access to the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, Iranian proxies’ ability to sustain current levels of violence against U.S. forces for months at increasing levels of sophistication suggests that Iranian supplies are not being meaningfully interdicted. These groups have remained capable and well-supplied for years—in 2018, for example, Israel felt threatened enough to drop 2,000 pounds of munitions on Iranian-backed forces near its border with Syria. It is unclear how the current military mission of disrupting these ongoing proxy networks is reasonably achievable or that the growing risks to vulnerable U.S. forces do not provide Iran more leverage against the United States than vice versa.
Proponents of a continued U.S. deployment in Syria also point to the U.S. goal of easing Syria’s humanitarian crisis, providing security for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Alleviating the suffering of the Syrian people is a worthy goal, but it is more greatly impacted by U.S. sanctions policy rather than the presence of U.S. forces on the ground. Though well-intentioned, the 2019 Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act has come under criticism for deterring the delivery of humanitarian aid to the majority of the country living under the Assad regime’s control. Absent amendments to the Caesar Act legislating permanent carve-outs for humanitarian supplies, which were temporarily offered after the February 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, the humanitarian situation will continue to languish, regardless of U.S. troop deployments.
Great Power Competition
Another argument for maintaining U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria is that both countries are a key battleground in larger competition with great power rivals, such as Russia and China. Such claims need historical and global perspective.
Russia’s influence and military footprint in Syria has certainly expanded since its 2015 intervention, but Moscow has enjoyed a longstanding security relationship with the country since the 1950s and has had access to the Mediterranean port of Tartus in 1971. Russian-Syrian security ties will continue whether or not U.S. troops are deployed to the country.
By contrast, China’s most visible engagement in the region this year was its brokered deal to restore Saudi and Iranian relations in March. Rather than alarm that China concluded an agreement at all, the main takeaway should be the evidence the deal provides that powers outside the Middle East do not require significant military presence to have the leverage to contribute to its stability. The 2020 Abraham Accords process, for example, arguably produced more tangible benefits for the U.S. in facilitating a coalition against Iranian ambitions than the presence of its troops in Iraq or Syria.
On a broader scale, if great power competition is the reason to continue deployments to Iraq and Syria, U.S. policymakers need a wider view. Keeping U.S. troops in both countries and the support assets required for their sustainment and security bogs the United States down in deployments that are not necessary to secure its regional interests. More globally, now that ISIS’ caliphate is defeated, Operation Inherent Resolve saps resources that can check the ambitions of our rivals more directly in Europe and particularly Asia. Despite the limited benefits the deployments provide, the risks to U.S. troops are increasingly high.
Palpable Risks
Some supporters of a continued U.S. military deployment in Iraq and Syria argue that the costs are comparatively low, with 113 U.S. servicemembers killed and 355 wounded in Operational Inherent Resolve since August 2014. But since ISIS fell in 2019, the more important question is why the United States should be willing to incur further casualties in either country at this point, given its credible over-the-horizon alternatives. Since the outbreak of the Gaza Crisis, reevaluation is even more necessary.
U.S. forces in both countries have faced periodic flare-ups of violence before, including in March of this year when an American contractor was killed and five servicemembers were wounded in a drone attack. The ongoing violence since October is part of a broader pattern of U.S. adversaries having the opportunity to impose costs on the United States when they see fit by targeting vulnerable, isolated U.S. outposts. The connection of recent attacks to the Gaza Crisis underscores that maintaining open-ended U.S. deployments in Iraq and Syria has become a liability limiting our freedom of action as we respond to other regional contingencies. These risks should add to the urgency to redeploy these forces.
Though the United States has flowed substantial additional combat power to the Middle East since October to deter regional escalation in the Gaza Crisis, harm to vulnerable U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria could cause the very conflict policymakers seek to avoid. During this conflict, the United States should maximize its flexibility and minimize the risk to its forces that various courses of action could pose. 3,400 troops are unlikely to have a decisive influence on the political future of Iraq or Syria, but their presence as a tripwire has not deterred militias from seizing the opportunity to try to kill Americans. In the case of contractors, they have already succeeded.
At the current rate of attacks, it may only be a matter of time before U.S. servicemembers are killed, and regional war becomes an acute threat. Given its over-the-horizon capabilities, the United States does not need to give its adversaries easy opportunities to harm U.S. troops in order to protect against threats to core regional interests. The United States urgently needs to de-risk its Middle East footprint instead of hoping for the best until servicemembers are killed, redeploying from Iraq and Syria missions that have for years no longer been worth their risks.