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Comments on Seizing Syria Oil Reinforces Anti-American Sentiment, Experts
Warn

Rikar Hussein

   WASHINGTON - While U.S. President Donald Trump this week reiterated his
   administration's intention to keep some American troops in Syria to
   control the country's eastern oilfields, experts and observers warn the
   president's comments could promote the view that the U.S. involvement
   in the Middle East is to extort revenue.

   "We are leaving soldiers to secure the oil," Trump said on Sunday,
   while announcing the death of the Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr
   al-Baghdadi during a raid in Syria's northwestern governorate of Idlib
   near the Turkish border. "And we may have to fight for the oil. It is
   OK. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell
   of a fight. But there's massive amounts of oil."

   Trump further suggested that he could employ a U.S. company such as
   ExxonMobil to modernize the productive capacity of the oilfields and
   "spread out the wealth."

   The remarks from the U.S. President are a "strategic messaging
   disaster" that could effectively play into the hands of American
   adversaries who argue the U.S. intervention in the region lacks legal
   basis, said Nicholas Heras, a Middle East researcher at the Center for
   a New American Security in Washington.

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