Washington will focus on pressuring Iran financially and contesting its activities in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, where the Islamic republic enjoys broad influence, the U.S. envoy to Syria said Wednesday, adding that Tehran should eventually withdraw all Iran-commanded forces from Syria.
Ambassador James Jeffrey told a group of journalists via a telephone conference that Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which U.S. President Donald Trump pulled America out of in May, had a bad effect on Iran's behavior and that it has "accelerated its activities."
Iran enjoys influence in several countries in the region where it backs well-armed terrorist groups deployed in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Speaking about Iran's future in Syria, Jeffrey said: "Iranians are part of the problem not part of the solution."
Jeffrey said the Trump administration is now focusing on putting financial pressure on Iran and "contesting more actively Iran's activities, particularly in Iraq, Syria and Yemen."
Washington this week imposed a new list of sanctions on Iran's vital oil exports, banking and transport industries.
Jeffrey expressed concerns about Russia's delivery of advanced S-300 air defense missiles last month to Syria, weeks after a Russian plane was shot down by Syrian forces responding to an Israeli air strike – a friendly fire incident that stoked regional tensions.
"We are concerned very much about the S-300 system being deployed to Syria," Jeffrey said. "The issue is at the detail level. Who will control it? What role will it play?"
"In the past, Russia has been permissive in consultations with the Israelis about Israeli strikes against Iranian targets inside Syria," he said. "We certainly hope that that permissive approach will continue."
Jeffrey said Israel has an "existential interest in blocking Iran from deploying long-range power projection systems such as surface-to-surface missiles" and drones aimed at and used against Israel.
Israel rarely acknowledges attacks inside Syria but has said it would use military action to prevent weapons transfers to its enemies.
In September, an Israeli military official revealed that the IDF had hit over 200 Iranian targets in Syria in the previous 18 months. Since the delivery of the S-300 systems, there have been no reports of Israeli airstrikes in Syria.
Iran has said it will stay in Syria as long as Assad wants it to.
Jeffrey said that recent retreats by U.S.-backed fighters in eastern Syria against members of the Islamic State group besieged in a pocket near the Iraq border was "a tactical reverse." He said "it's nothing serious. The ISIS forces there basically are still surrounded and reinforcements are coming in," he said.
ISIS launched several counteroffensives in recent weeks against the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces who have been trying to take the area from the extremists since early September, killing scores of them and capturing others. The counterattacks were carried out during sandstorms in the mostly desert area.
"One other reason for the reverse there was unusually bad and sustained weather that limited our use of air power which is very important for our fight against [ISIS]," he said. "As the weather changes and as additional troops are introduced, I expect the situation will change and we'll see advances against [ISIS]."
He added that after ISIS is defeated, concerns about the group as an insurgent force will remain "and also ISIS's ability to infiltrate back into areas as a terrorist force both in Iraq and in Syria in particular."
Jeffrey said that when American officials say that U.S. troops will stay in Syria, "we say until the enduring defeat of ISIS," which means to establish the conditions so that local forces, local populations and local governments can deal with ISIS as a terrorist or as an insurgent movement.
"We're not there yet," he said.
The United States seeks to regularize cease-fires now in place in Syria, move toward a political solution and then have all foreign forces that have entered the conflict since 2011 leave, with the exception of Russia.
"The Russians, having been there before, would not in fact withdraw, but you've got four other outside military forces - the Israeli, the Turkish, the Iranian and the American - all operating inside Syria right now. It's a dangerous situation," Jeffrey said.
