Real Clear Defense: Is the Pentagon About to Hand Iran a Major Border Crossing?
U.S. airstrikes are softening the Islamic State at a key border crossing without any plans for a follow-on ground offensive to deny it to Iran.
The Pentagon announced on Wednesday the start of its final ground offensive against the Islamic State in Syria. The Coalition will support the primarily Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in capturing Hajin, a village north of the Euphrates River near the Iraq-Syria border. Hajin, however, is not the last pocket of Islamic State control. Coalition airstrikes indicate that the Islamic State maintains a robust presence in Abu Kamal, a critical position along the Syria-Iraq border that Iran seeks to control.
Since the start of Operation Roundup – the campaign to accelerate the defeat of the Islamic State in the Euphrates River Valley and the Iraq-Syria border region – the Coalition has conducted 69 percent of its strikes in Abu Kamal. In the past three months alone, U.S.-led airstrikes have destroyed 14 Islamic State command-and-control centers in this territory, more than all other locations in Iraq and Syria combined.
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WNU Editor: The Pentagon is focused on destroying the Islamic State, and they have done a very good job at accomplishing that. But like all wars I sometimes wonder if any planning has been done to calculate and strategize on what happens when the fighting stops. In the case of Syria .... it looks like the decision has been made to not block Iran's attempts to establish a land bridge to Lebanon from this part of Syria.
