‘Powerful Israeli Lobby’ Blocking US Withdrawal From Iraq and Syria

US forces in Iraq and Syria have been coming under almost daily drone and rocket attack by militias since October amid Washington’s support for Tel Aviv’s military assault in Gaza.

Last Saturday, three US troops were killed and 47 others wounded in a drone attack on a base in Jordan just across the border from an illegal US outpost in Syria.

A powerful foreign lobby and elements of the American deep state are working to prevent Washington from pulling troops out of Iraq and Syria, Richard Black, a former Republican senator in the Virginia Senate, has told Sputnik.

“The Israeli lobby is powerful, and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu fiercely opposes any such US withdrawal,” Black explained.

“Even if he wanted to withdraw, [President] Biden [would face] resistance from the entrenched foreign policy establishment that could prevent his exit, just as they blocked President Trump from carrying out his plan to exit Syria,” the former lawmaker added, referring to efforts by members of Trump’s administration including former Pentagon chief James Mattis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Advisor John Bolton to undermine the president’s Syria orders.

“Survival of the Kurdish SDF is solely dependent on American might. It will dissolve once the American occupation ends,” Black added, commenting on the US-backed Kurdish-led militia force in de facto control over the oil and food rich-regions of northeast Syria, which the Damascus government needs desperately for reconstruction.

The US occupation of Syria and American troops’ presence in Iraq are part of a global problem, Black said. “DoD is overstretched across the globe,” he said.

Meanwhile, “our soldiers have been taught critical race theory, making them distrustful of one another,” he added. Black also noted that as the US continues to “squander” billions of dollars on conflicts in far-off Ukraine and Gaza, America’s own borders have been left “open” to “foreign invasion” by illegal immigrants.

“These deficiencies and shortages provide powerful incentives for Biden to withdraw from Syria and Iraq, but doing so is difficult, even for a determined president,” Black stressed.

Black, 79, served as a member of the Virginia Senate between 2012 and 2020, and before that as a member from the state’s House of Delegates from 1998-2006.

The Republican former military officer and Army lawyer made headlines in 2014 after sending a letter to Syrian President Bashar Assad thanking the Syrian Army for its “heroic rescue of Christians in the Qalamoun Mountain Range” as part of government forces’ operations against jihadist militants backed by the US and its regional allies.

Black’s name ended up on IS’s* enemies list in 2015. Black traveled to Syria in 2016 on a goodwill visit aimed at debunking the Western narrative regarding the CIA dirty war against the Middle Eastern nation.

Damascus has repeatedly called on all US forces operating in Syria to vacate the country, emphasizing that they were not invited and that their pretext for being there (preventing an IS* resurgence) is a sham.

Last week, the Iraqi government and US forces began talks aimed at bringing the US-led mission in the country to an end following Washington’s air strike assassination of a senior pro-Baghdad militia leader last December.

Ilya Tsukanov is a Moscow-based correspondent specializing in Eastern European, US and Middle Eastern politics, Cold War history, energy security and military affairs. Member of the Sputnik team since the site’s inception in 2014. Opposed to censorship of all kinds.

2 thoughts on “‘Powerful Israeli Lobby’ Blocking US Withdrawal From Iraq and Syria”

    1. Not reported by the mainstream press these days is the fact reported in The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the UK at the time of the coalition invasion of Iraq.

      That report then stated that the US had repaired damaged oil pipeline running through Iraq between Mosul and Kirkuk and then extended that pipeline all the way into Israel.

      It was then stated that unlimited amounts of oil are being simply taken from Iraq and pumped into Israel and Israel alone, with the arrangement between the US and Israel that oil will continue to be pumped from Iraq into Israel in perpetuity totally free of charge in unlimited amounts, by US forces and their operatives.

      This is occurring due to the total hijacking of the US by overwhelming numbers of infiltrated hostile foreign power military occupation officials running an effective Jewish military dictatorship of the US who have really been running the US for Israel alone and for the ‘tribe’ alone even before Israel came into existence for very many years already.

      The coalition slave nations of Israel whose mind-wiped soldiers did the genocidally murderous attacks on Iraq of course get no oil at all, it is enough for such slave nations willing to grovel and murder for Israel to have the ‘privilege’ of being able to offer fealty to their slavemasters by perpetually offering oil, military support and other wealth at their feet.

      Not that anyone at all should be giving themselves the ‘right’ to steal Iraq’s oil, and most especially not at the cost of such horrific bloodshed and increasing levels of permanent genetic damage to the inhabitants of Iraq, but this takes any guessing out of who was responsible for the war against Iraq.

      Certainly, one of the principal reasons that the US armed forces are made to remain in Iraq is to guard the oil pipeline and oil wellheads to ensure continual supplies of looted oil in their service to Israel, as the US government is literally nothing but a satellite government of Israel, and the Israelis themselves will very naturally not want to risk losing their own lives to get that oil, when simple slaves are available to do that for them.

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