The Pentagon chief said the plan was still in the discussion phase and had not yet been presented to President Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly said the Islamic State group has been defeated and has portrayed the withdrawal of American support for Kurdish forces as part of his larger goal of bringing troops home from the Middle East.

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Esper emphasized that the proposal to leave a small number of troops in eastern Syria was intended to give the president "maneuver room" and wasn't final.

"There has been a discussion about possibly doing it," Esper told a press conference in Afghanistan before heading to Saudi Arabia. "There has been no decision with regard to numbers or anything like that."

Still, the fact that such a plan was under consideration was another sign the administration was still trying to sort out its overall strategy amid fierce criticism from the president's Republican allies of his abrupt decision to pull US forces back – essentially clearing the way for Turkey's military incursion into the border region to push back the American-allied Kurdish forces.

A White House official said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) raised the issue of keeping US forces in eastern Syria to protect the oil fields and that Trump supported the idea. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

Esper said the main goal would be to make sure Islamic State doesn't gain control of the oil fields and the revenue they generate.

The defense secretary said American troops around Kobani are withdrawing and that the US is maintaining combat air patrol over US forces in Syria as the withdrawal goes on. He said the US is using overhead surveillance to try to monitor the recently negotiated ceasefire "as best we can."

While Trump has insisted he's bringing home Americans from "endless wars" in the Mideast, Esper said all US troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq and the American military will continue operations against ISIS.

The troops aren't coming home and the United States isn't leaving the turbulent Middle East, according to plans outlined by Esper before he arrived in Afghanistan on Sunday. The fight in Syria against ISIS, once spearheaded by American allied Syrian Kurds who have been cast aside by Trump, will be undertaken by US forces, possibly from neighboring Iraq.

Esper did not rule out the idea that US forces would conduct counterterrorism missions from Iraq into Syria. But he told reporters traveling with him that those details will be worked out over time.

Trump nonetheless tweeted: "USA soldiers are not in combat or ceasefire zones. We have secured the Oil. Bringing soldiers home!"

The Republican president declared this past week that Washington had no stake in defending the Kurdish fighters who died by the thousands as America's partners fighting in Syria against ISIS. Turkey conducted a weeklong offensive into northeastern Syria against the Kurdish fighters before a military pause.

"It's time for us to come home," Trump said, defending his removal of US troops from that part of Syria and praising his decision to send more troops and military equipment to Saudi Arabia to help the kingdom defend against Iran.

Esper's earlier comments to reporters traveling with him were the first to specifically layout where American troops will go as they shift from Syria and what the counter-ISIS fight could look like. Esper said he has spoken to his Iraqi counterpart about the plan to shift about 1,000 troops from Syria into western Iraq.

Trump's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, asked about the fact that the troops were not coming home as the president claimed they would, said, "Well, they will eventually." He told "Fox News Sunday" that "the quickest way to get them out of danger was to get them into Iraq."

Trump ordered the bulk of the approximately 1,000 US troops in Syria to withdraw after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made it clear in a phone call that his forces were about to invade Syria to push back Kurdish forces that Turkey considers terrorists.

The pullout largely abandons America's Kurdish allies who have fought ISIS alongside US troops for several years. Between 200 and 300 US troops will remain at the southern Syrian outpost of al-Tanf.

The US has more than 5,000 American forces in Iraq, under an agreement between the two countries. The US pulled its troops out of Iraq in 2011 when combat operations there ended, but they went back in after ISIS began to take over large swaths of the country in 2014. The number of American forces in Iraq has remained small due to political sensitivities in the country, after years of what some Iraqis consider US occupation during the war that began in 2003.

Esper said he will talk with other allies at a NATO meeting in the coming week to discuss the way ahead for the counter-ISIS mission.

Asked if US special operations forces will conduct unilateral military operations into Syria to go after ISIS, Esper said that is an option that will be discussed with allies over time.

On Sunday, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a group of American lawmakers on a visit to Jordan to discuss "the deepening crisis" in Syria.

Jordan's state news agency said that King Abdullah II, in a meeting with the Americans, stressed the importance of safeguarding Syria's territorial integrity and guarantees for the "safe and voluntary" return of refugees.

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The Senate voted 68-23 in favor of a nonbinding amendment, drafted by Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying it was the sense of the Senate that Islamic terrorist groups in both countries continue to pose a "serious threat" to the United States.

The procedural vote to cut off debate meant that the amendment would be added to a broader Middle East security bill likely to come up for a final Senate vote next week.

The amendment acknowledges progress against Islamic State and al-Qaida in Syria and Afghanistan but warns that "a precipitous withdrawal" without effective efforts to secure gains could destabilize the region and create a vacuum that could be filled by Iran or Russia.

It calls upon the Trump administration to certify conditions have been met for the groups' "enduring defeat" before any significant withdrawal from Syria or Afghanistan.

Thursday's Senate action marked the second time in two months that the Republican-led Senate has supported a measure going against Trump's foreign policy, although legislation to change his policies has yet to become law.

In December, over Trump's objections, the Senate voted to end U.S. military support for the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen and blame Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

However, the December measure went no further, since it never came up for a vote in the House of Representatives, then led by Trump's fellow Republicans.

The potential impact of Thursday's vote was similarly uncertain since the amendment McConnell offered was nonbinding and there has been no indication of when, if ever, the broader Middle East security bill would come up for a House vote.

Trump has decided to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria on the grounds that Islamic State terrorists no longer pose a threat, saying on Twitter on Wednesday, "We have beaten them" as he disputed Senate testimony by his director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, on Tuesday that the group still posed a threat.

Trump said earlier on Thursday he would bring American troops home if a peace deal were reached to end 17 years of war in Afghanistan. The United States and the Taliban have sketched the outlines for an eventual peace accord, a U.S. special envoy said on Monday, but there was no sign the insurgent group had accepted key U.S. demands.

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U.S. President Donald Trump announced last month the decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops who have deployed to Syria in support of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia in the fight against Islamic State.

The coalition "has begun the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria. Out of concern for operational security, we will not discuss specific timelines, locations or troop movements," Col. Sean Ryan said.

Washington's Kurdish allies in northern Syria fear the withdrawal will open the way for Turkey to mount a long-threatened offensive against their area. Turkey views the dominant Syrian Kurdish groups as a national security threat.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton suggested on Tuesday that protecting the Kurds would be a precondition of the U.S. withdrawal, drawing a rebuke from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who called his comments "a serious mistake."

But U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday the withdrawal would not be scuppered despite the Turkish threats.

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Three of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the recommendations were part of discussions on a draft plan by the U.S. military.

However, discussions are still at an early stage inside the Pentagon and no decision has been made, the officials said.

It is unclear what the Pentagon will ultimately recommend to the White House.

The plan will be presented to the White House in the coming days, with President Donald Trump making the final decision.

The Pentagon said it would be "inappropriate" and premature to comment on what will happen with the weapons.

"Planning is ongoing, and focused on executing a deliberate and controlled withdrawal of forces while taking all measures possible to ensure our troops' safety," said Pentagon spokesman Commander Sean Robertson. The White House did not comment.

Trump last week abruptly ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria, drawing widespread criticism and prompting Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' resignation.

The officials said Trump's announcement upset U.S. commanders, who view it as a betrayal of the Kurdish YPG militia, which has led the fight to eradicate Islamic State from northeastern Syria.

Turkey views the YPG as an extension of a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey, and has threatened to launch an offensive against the YPG, raising fears of a surge in violence that could harm hundreds of thousands of civilians.

One of the officials said the U.S. had told the YPG the U.S. would continue to arm it until the fight against Islamic State is completed.

"The fight isn't over. We can't simply start asking for the weapons back," the official said.

The proposal to leave U.S.-supplied weapons with the YPG, which could include anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles and mortars, would reassure the Kurdish allies that they are not being abandoned.

But Turkey wants the United States to take the weapons back, so leaving them could complicate Trump's plan to allow Turkey to finish off the fight against Islamic State inside Syria.

The Pentagon keeps records of the weapons it has supplied to the YPG and its chain of custody. But the U.S. officials said it would be nearly impossible to locate all the equipment.

"How are we going to get them back and who is going to take them back?" one official said.

The debate over whether to leave weapons with the YPG coincides with Trump's national security adviser John Bolton's visit to Turkey and Israel next week for talks on Syria.

The U.S. told Turkey it would take back the weapons after the defeat of Islamic State, which has lost all but a few slivers of territory in northeastern Syria.

"The idea that we'd be able to recover them is asinine. So we leave them where they are," an official said.

A person familiar with the discussions on the U.S. withdrawal plan, who asked not to be identified, said the White House and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would oppose the proposal to allow the YPG to keep its U.S.-supplied weapons.

The recommendation "is a rejection of Trump's policy to withdraw from Syria," the source said.

Turkey said weapons supplied to the YPG in the past have ended up in the hands of its Kurdish separatists, and described any weapon given to the insurgents as a threat to Turkey's security.

A phone call between Trump and Erdogan two weeks ago led to the decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria.

During the call, Trump had been expected to deliver a standard warning over Erdogan's plan to launch a cross-border attack targeting U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, U.S. officials said.

Instead, Trump reshaped U.S. policy in the Middle East, abandoning a quarter of Syrian territory and handing Turkey the job of finishing off Islamic State in Syria.

However, in the first public indication of any modification in Trump's plan, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Florida) said on Friday that the U.S. withdrawal from Syria has been delayed.

"We have been able [to get] the pace of the retreat or withdrawal slowed," Rubio told a press conference in his home state, emphasizing that this was "important."

Rubio remains highly critical of any U.S. withdrawal from Syria now.

"We are outsourcing the fight against ISIS to the Turks," Rubio said, even though the Turks' "priority is to wipe out the Kurds, whom they view as a threat ... [because the Kurds] want to establish their own independent nation in northeast Syria and southern Turkey."

He said that for the past two years, the Kurds "have fought as the ground force against ISIS" and they and their families "could be slaughtered."

Rubio said the U.S. abandonment of the Kurds is "morally wrong" and could lead an entire generation of young Kurds to "grow up hating this country."

He also said that U.S. forces have a small force, "largely an anti-Hezbollah presence," in southern Syria at al-Tanf, near the Iraqi border. The U.S. presence there also protects some 50,000 Syrians, who have taken refuge from the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Al-Tanf straddles the main highway between Damascus and Baghdad, and the U.S. base blocks a key route that Iran could use to ship weapons to Hezbollah if its ally, the Syrian regime, gains control of the area.

Rubio also noted the damage to the U.S. reputation in the region that will ensue, asking, "Who is going to partner with us in the future?"

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., SC) has also been a strong critic of Trump's surprise decision to withdraw from Syria.

Following reports on Friday that the YPG had turned to Syria to block any Turkish attack, Graham described that as a "major disaster in the making."

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A decision to pull out completely, confirmed by U.S. officials and expected in the coming months, coincides with the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops finishing up a campaign to retake territory once held by Islamic State militants.

But it could leave the United States with few options to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State. It could also undercut U.S. leverage in the region and undermine diplomatic efforts to end the Syrian civil war, which is now in its eighth year.

"They're all coming back and they're coming back now. We won," Trump declared on Wednesday in a video posted on Twitter, titled "After historic victories against ISIS, it's time to bring our great young people home!"

News of a full withdrawal drew immediate criticism from some of Trump's fellow Republicans, who said that the U.S. withdrawal would strengthen the hand of Russia and Iran, both of which support Syrian President Bashar Assad.

It may also leave an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, exposed. The SDF has been among the most effective forces in combating Islamic State, but it is currently under threat as Turkey weighs a new offensive in Syria.

U.S. commanders on the ground, who have developed strong ties to SDF leaders, voiced concerns about what a hasty withdrawal would mean for the U.S-backed forces and were surprised by the decision, U.S. officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But Trump said that he considered the mission in Syria over given Islamic State's territorial losses.

Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, was slow to get involved in Syria's civil war, seeking to avoid being dragged into another open-ended foreign conflict like the one in Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict, which has displaced around half of Syria's pre-war population of 22 million.

But in a campaign to defeat Islamic State in Syria, Obama ordered airstrikes from September 2014 and then troops into the country the following year.

The White House declined to offer a timeline for the withdrawal.

One U.S. official said Washington aimed to withdraw troops within 60 to 100 days and said the U.S. State Department was evacuating all its personnel in Syria within 24 hours. A second official said they could leave even sooner.

Trump is wary of open-ended foreign conflicts and his decision on Syria raises questions about whether he may also reconsider the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, where American forces have been fighting since 2001.

Trump reluctantly agreed to a troop increase last year but U.S. officials have privately acknowledged a sense of urgency and are increasingly focused on securing a peace deal with a resurgent Taliban.

Some of Trump's Republican allies in Congress railed against the pullout decision. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, often a Trump ally but generally a foreign policy hawk, said a withdrawal would have "devastating consequences" for the United States in the region and throughout the world.

"An American withdrawal at this time would be a big win for ISIS, Iran, Bashar Assad of Syria, and Russia," Graham said in a statement.

The surprise decision also raised eyebrows abroad.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would study the decision and would ensure its own security.

A British defense minister said he strongly disagreed with Trump that Islamic State had been defeated in Syria.

In Russia, TASS news agency quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria created prospects for a political settlement.

Many of the remaining U.S. troops in Syria are special operations forces working closely with the SDF.

The partnership with the SDF has helped defeat of Islamic State in Syria but has outraged NATO ally Turkey, which views Kurdish YPG forces in the alliance as an extension of a separatist militant group fighting inside Turkey.

Ankara is threatening a new offensive in Syria. To date, U.S. forces in Syria have been seen as a stabilizing factor and have somewhat restrained Turkey's actions against the SDF.

A complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria would leave a sizable U.S. military presence in the region, including about 5,200 troops across the border in Iraq. Much of the U.S. campaign in Syria has been waged by warplanes flying out of Qatar and other locations across the Middle East.

Still, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and State Department officials have long fretted about leaving Syria before a peace agreement can be reached.

Islamic State is also widely expected to revert to guerrilla tactics once it no longer holds territory. The U.S. has not ruled out that Islamic State's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi could still be alive.

A U.S. withdrawal could open Trump up to criticism if Islamic State reemerges.

In the past, Trump lambasted Obama for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, preceding an unraveling of the Iraqi armed forces. Iraqi forces collapsed in the face of Islamic State's advance into Iraq in 2014.

However, a senior administration official rejected the comparison to Iraq, where the U.S. had many more troops and would have stayed if Baghdad had provided legal protections for American forces.

"That's an apples and oranges comparison given the scope and scale of our engagement in Iraq," the official said.

Islamic State declared its so-called "caliphate" in 2014 after seizing large swathes of Syria and Iraq. The hard-line group established its de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, using it as a base to plot attacks in Europe.

According to U.S. estimates, the group oversaw about 100,000 square kilometers (39,000 square miles) of territory, with about 8 million people under Islamic State rule. It had estimated revenues of nearly one billion dollars a year.

A senior U.S. official last week said the group was down to its last 1 percent of the territory it once held. It has no remaining territory in Iraq.

Hajin, the group's last major stronghold in Syria, is close to being seized by U.S.-backed SDF forces.

After losing Hajin, Islamic State will control a diminishing strip of territory along the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in the area where U.S.-backed operations are focused. Militants also control some desert terrain west of the river in territory otherwise controlled by the Damascus government and its allies.

U.S. officials have warned that taking back the group's territory would not be the same as defeating it.

"The coalition has liberated the ISIS-held territory, but the campaign against ISIS is not over," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement."

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