The US appears to be worried about reports of an impending Syrian military operation to retake its own city of Deraa, located in a de-escalation zone in Syria’s southwest.
On Friday, the United States threatened Syria with “firm and appropriate measures” in response to ceasefire violations and cautioned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against “broadening the conflict.”
The warning comes just as Syrian government forces are advancing to clear out the last Islamic State (formerly ISIS) pockets in the country’s southern region of Deraa.
In the past, Washington has claimed that the US military’s illegal presence in Syria was to fight ISIS. Washington’s bizarre present stance can only be interpreted as protection for the same terrorists they had purported to be fighting.
Russia Insider reports:
Washington is concerned about the Syrian government’s “expansion” inside… Syria. The United States has threatened “firm and appropriate measures” against Syrian government forces, if they take back a part of their own territory.
“As a guarantor of this de-escalation area with Russia and Jordan, the United States will take firm and appropriate measures in response to Assad regime violations,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement late on Friday, Reuters reported.
The UK-based, one-man Syrian war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported on Wednesday that Syrian government forces fresh from their victory this week against an Islamic State pocket in south Damascus were moving into the southern province of Deraa.
Syrian state-run media have reported that government aircraft have dropped leaflets on rebel-held areas in Deraa urging fighters to disarm.
The U.S. warning comes weeks after a similar attack on a de-escalation zone in northeastern Syria held by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. U.S. ground and air forces repelled the more than four-hour attack, killing as many as 300 pro-Assad militia members, many of them Russian mercenaries.
Backed by Russian warplanes, ground forces from Iran and allied militia, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have helped Assad drive rebels from Syria’s biggest cities, putting him in an unassailable military position.
The Syrian government is so confident in Assad’s position, in fact, that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is releasing soldiers from service who have served from 2010.
Now the SAA is preparing to liberate even more SYRIAN territory in the southwest region of the country. This makes the Israelis nervous, most likely compelling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pressure his cronies in Washington to warn Syria against eliminating jihadi– and Free Syrian Army (FSA)-held pockets near the Jordanian border and the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.
There are scattered reports that US air forces have recently attacked SAA soldiers out in eastern Homs Province, but so far they remain unconfirmed.
* This article was expanded from original report piblished by YourNewsWire.
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