The Trump administration is developing a new strategy for pushing Iran's military and its proxy forces out of war-torn Syria, White House officials told NBC News on Tuesday.
According to the report, the new strategy would not involve direct U.S. military operations against Iranian soldiers or Iranian proxies in Syria, but would underscore political and diplomatic efforts to force Iran out of Syria by squeezing it financially.
Sources familiar with the plan said the U.S. would also impose sanctions on Russian and Iranian companies working on reconstruction in Syria.
"There's a real opportunity for the U.S. and its allies to make the Iranian regime pay for its continued occupation of Syria," Mark Dubowitz, chief executive at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told NBC.
The report said U.S. defense officials had expressed concern that an increased focus on Iran and the presence of both militaries in Syria could pull the U.S. closer into the conflict in Syria.
Legal experts said an expansion of the U.S. military mission in Syria to directly target Iranian assets would put it on the wrong side of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Act passed by Congress in 2001.
The act greenlighted the use of military force against Islamic State terrorists in Syria but limits U.S. action to targeting groups responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and their associates.
"If the new strategy means opening the door to using force against Iran or Iranian military forces in Syria there needs to be a new Authorization for Use of Military Force," Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway told NBC.
"Targeting Iran clearly falls outside the scope [of the authorization] which only includes groups with ties to 9/11. Iran doesn't meet that wwww. It would be amazing if [the Trump administration tries] to make the claim that this falls under the current AUMF. That would be stretching this AUMF way past its breaking point."
An administration official said that since last year Trump's strategy on Syria has had four goals: defeating Islamic State, deterring Syrian President Bashar Assad from using chemical weapons, fostering a political transition in Damascus, and curbing what he called "Iranian malign influence in Syria so that it cannot threaten the region."
