In the southeastern Syrian desert, near the Jordan and Iraq borders, far from the ruins of the Caliphate or the carnage of the Turkish invasion, lies the terminal phase of a U.S. war.
A dusty garrison outpost called al-Tanf, or sometimes at-Tanf, is now the last redoubt for the American forces in Syria that have occupied it since 2016. It has little to do with the war against the so-called Islamic State, the ostensible purpose of the U.S. in Syria, and far more to do with a confrontation against an entirely different adversary: Iran.
In a coda for the war, the missions U.S. forces can execute from al-Tanf are unclear. Along with a proxy force the U.S. has trained for years at al-Tanf, the Syrian Arab Magahwir al-Thawra, the U.S. occasionally intercepts ISIS fighters. But officials familiar with the area note that the base is far from where the bulk of ISIS is.
“Al-Tanf grew as a sop to Jordan, grew because Donald Trump delegated authorities to ground commanders, and was repurposed as an anti-Iran thing, despite the very real fact that Iranian aircraft fly over it on a routine basis,” said Aaron Stein, director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
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