(CNN)President Donald Trump, mulling how to end the US role in the Syrian conflict while having other countries “take care of it,” has maintained an unusual fixation: the jumbo jets owned by Persian Gulf monarchs.
“Without us you wouldn’t last two weeks. You’d be overrun. And you’d have to fly commercial,” Trump told one Gulf leader recently in a conversation he boasted about later to friends.
As the President’s national security team prepares options for Syria, advisers and officials say economic factors — rather than a concern for global security — have animated Trump. Even as top US military officials quietly prepare plans that would actually increase the number of US troops deployed to Syria, Trump has decided that the time has come to cut an early exit, according to people familiar with the situation.
He’s increasingly pressed foreign leaders — particularly in the oil rich Gulf states — to step up.
Speaking to reporters in the East Room, Trump said Tuesday that he and his team were nearing a decision on how to proceed in Syria now that ISIS has lost most of its territory.
“Sometimes it’s time to come back home. And we’re thinking about that very seriously,” Trump said, bemoaning the trillions of dollars spent on wars in the Middle East which he said resulted in “nothing except death and destruction.”
“I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home. I want to start rebuilding our nation,” Trump said.
Those were views Trump first aired publicly last week during a freewheeling, campaign-style event in Ohio, where Trump inserted his declaration that “we’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon” into a speech that was otherwise focused on a booming US economy.
The statement caused a stir back in Washington, where puzzled Pentagon and State Department officials contacted the White House to determine what, precisely, the President’s position on Syria was.
National security officials had been weighing for months the conditions that would need to be met before US troops withdraw from the country, where they have helping battle ISIS. Military commanders have not recommended to Trump that he order a withdrawal of US troops there, citing the persistent presence of ISIS and the power vacuum that would result if the US departs.
But he has insisted in private since at least February that he wants out of the country, multiple people familiar with the matter said. And he has lamented the expenditure of billions in US taxpayers dollars to fund a fight he says should be financed by regional players.
That’s in contrast to members of his own administration, who insist the ISIS fight must continue until the terror group is eradicated. While the US and its allies on the ground have made massive gains reducing ISIS’ territory, the grou is entrenched in its remaining strongholds and removing them will require continued US involvement, those national security officials have said.
Officials have also warned Trump that players like Iran, Turkey and Russia could use a US withdrawal to advance their own strategic interests in Syria. The leaders of those countries — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Turkish President Recep…
