American troops pulled out of the al-Tanf military base in southeastern Syria on Thursday, handing control to the Syrian interim government's military. U.S. Central Command confirmed the withdrawal as part of what it called a "deliberate and conditions-based transition" by Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve.
The Syrian Ministry of Defense said its forces took over the base and its surroundings and began deploying along the nation's borders with Iraq and Jordan, The Hill reported. The U.S. had operated out of al-Tanf since 2016 — a nearly decade-long footprint that outlasted two administrations and multiple shifts in the Syrian conflict.
It's gone now. And the sky hasn't fallen.
A Transition Built on Results, Not Retreat
Centcom commander Adm. Brad Cooper framed the drawdown in terms of continued strength, not withdrawal for withdrawal's sake:
"U.S. forces remain poised to respond to any ISIS threats that arise in the region as we support partner-led efforts to prevent the terrorist network's resurgence."
Cooper also underscored the strategic rationale behind the posture shift:
"Maintaining pressure on ISIS is essential to protecting the U.S. homeland and strengthening regional security."
The numbers back the confidence. During operations in Syria, the U.S. struck more than 100 targets with more than 350 precision munitions and either captured or killed more than 50 ISIS terrorists, according to Centcom. The Pentagon started pulling around 600 troops last year, citing success in degrading the terror network. The transition at al-Tanf is the next step in that trajectory — not a reversal of it.
The U.S. still maintains a military presence at other bases inside Syria. This isn't an abandonment. It's a rebalancing.
Syria's New Reality
The handoff comes as Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa moves aggressively to consolidate control over the country's territory. His forces led an offensive last month in northeastern Syria against Kurdish-led militias — the Syrian Democratic Forces — and seized control of the region's oil fields.
That matters. Whoever controls the oil fields controls leverage over reconstruction, over rival factions, over the economic future of a shattered country. Al-Sharaa appears to understand that sovereignty isn't a talking point. It's a resource game.
President Trump's special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said last month that the U.S. would shift to working with al-Sharaa's forces on counterterrorism operations in the country. The al-Tanf handoff is that policy made concrete. Rather than maintaining an indefinite garrison at the intersection of three countries' borders, Washington is transferring the mission to a partner with both the incentive and the ground presence to sustain it.
The Broader Lesson Washington Refuses to Learn
For years, the foreign policy establishment treated every military footprint as permanent — a kind of geopolitical mortgage that could never be paid off. Bases opened. They never closed. Troop levels ratcheted up — U.S. forces in Syria swelled to more than 2,000 following Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, but the conditions for drawing them back down remained perpetually out of reach.
The assumption was always that withdrawal equals failure. That leaving a base means ceding ground. That any transition to local forces is a prelude to collapse.
But that framework confuses presence with purpose. The purpose of al-Tanf was to degrade ISIS and deny the group operational space. By Centcom's own accounting, that mission produced measurable results. The question was never whether to leave; it was whether leaving could be done responsibly, with a credible partner on the other end of the handshake.
That partner now exists. Whether al-Sharaa's government proves durable is a separate question — one that Syria's neighbors and its own people will answer over time. But the U.S. cannot hold every corridor in every fractured state forever, and pretending otherwise is not a strategy. It's inertia dressed up as resolve.
What Comes Next
The remaining U.S. presence in Syria will likely continue to draw scrutiny — from the foreign policy establishment arguing it's too small, and from non-interventionists arguing it's still too much. That tension is healthy. What matters is that the drawdown is proceeding on conditions, not on cable news timelines.
Syria's borders with Iraq and Jordan are now in Syrian hands. The interim government's military is deploying along them. American forces remain postured to strike ISIS if it resurfaces.
That's not a retreat. That's a country finally being told to secure its own territory — and doing it.
