US allies in the Middle East want President Trump to continue "engagement with Russia," according to a top counter-Islamic State official at the State Department.
"Engagement with Russia on Syria is something that nearly all of our partners here in the region have encouraged, including our friends here in Iraq," Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy who has been leading the counter-ISIS effort since 2015, told reporters in Iraq. "So that engagement, of course, will continue."
Trump's desire for rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin has proven controversial for months, due to the parallel issue of the 2016 cyberattacks against the Democratic party and Trump's hesitance to acknowledge Russia's culpability. But McGurk said it has already paid dividends in the counter-ISIS fight.
"We have also worked out very important what we call de-confliction arrangements with the Russian Federation, which is helping to enable and speed up the overall campaign against ISIS, and that is going fairly well," McGurk said. "I think you saw in the news yesterday, particularly after the very important meeting between President Trump and President Putin in Hamburg, that we concluded, together with our close partner Jordan, an arrangement for a cease-fire in Southwest Syria. This is the first step in a process for a more durable arrangement in Southwest Syria that we are looking to end the war in that very important part of the country."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson unveiled a plan for cooperation in the days leading up to the Trump-Putin meeting. Syria policy represented one of the most significant issues on the agenda, in addition to the question of whether Trump would rebuke Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
"With the liberation of Raqqa now underway, ISIS has been badly wounded, and it could be on the brink of complete defeat in Syria if all parties focus on this objective," Tillerson said.
Some US leaders, as well as allies such as Israel, worry that cooperation with Russia against the immediate threat of terrorism will allow Putin to achieve longer-term policy successes in Syria and the Middle East.
Israeli officials reportedly asked Tillerson's team not to allow the Russians to police the security of a southern Syria safe zone, due to an apparent concern that Russian would allow Iranian forces to amass near the borders of Israel.
And yet, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the Trump-Putin meeting that "the security around these de-escalation zones will be maintained with the use of Russian military in coordination with the US and Jordan."
Russia's looming importance to the end-stage of the Syria conflict highlights an American concern that the former Cold War rival has achieved "a significant advantage for a country that didn't have anything to do, had no role whatsoever in the Middle East two years ago, three years ago," as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., put it in December.
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