Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, defended the president’s action as necessary and said Trump did not need to seek authorization from Congress. Obama also announce… U.S. airstrikes were conducted against an ISIL military base known as the "Osama bin Laden Camp" while at the same time, two dozen In the aftermath of the rescue mission, and purportedly as a response to airstrikes in Iraq, ISIL beheaded three hostages over a one-month period: Americans The United States had since 2014 led efforts to establish a global coalition to counter ISIL.The coalition of 5 September (10 countries) decided to support anti-ISIL forces in Iraq and Syria.The coalition of 3 December 2014 (sixty countries) that styled itself as the On 20 October 2014, the United States began airdropping supplies to By January 2015, the United States was set to send 400 troops and hundreds of support staff to countries neighboring Syria in order to train 5,000 opposition soldiers a year for the next three years.However, only about 200 rebel fighters actually began training, the majority of whom left after being required to agree to fight only against ISIL and not the Assad government.In his address to the nation on 10 September 2014, U.S. President Obama announced his intention to bomb ISIL targets in Syria and called on Congress to authorize a program to train and arm rebels who were fighting ISIL and the Syrian forces of The U.S. did not request permission from the Syrian government, nor did it coordinate its actions with the Syrian government, provide direct notification to the Syrian military or give indication of timing on specific targets, but it did notify the Syrian U.N. representative, which the Syrian government confirmed.Before the airstrikes began, the United States also informed For a chronological timeline of the intervention, see One of the groups targeted by U.S. airstrikes was the Later statements by government officials indicated that the threat of a plot may have been less severe than initially reported.On 6 November, a second round of airstrikes was launched against Khorasan and al-Nusra in northwestern Syria, along with On 24 March 2015, it was revealed that the US airstrikes on Khorasan had killed 17 militants from the group.During the beginning of the coalition interventions, leaders, including U.S. President Obama, said coalition ground forces would not be used in the fight against ISIL either in Iraq or Syria unless they were local coalition forces.In November 2015, the Obama administration began the deployment of U.S. special forces to Syria, on the mission of assisting rebel forces in their fight against ISIL, President Obama then ordered several dozen Special Operations troops into On 17 March 2016, the day after the declaration of the During the SDF's May 2016 offensive against ISIL in Northern Raqqa, In March 2018, SDF press secretary in Deir ez-Zor Mehdi Kobani reportedly told On 8 April 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump called Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad "Animal Assad", following suspected chemical attack carried out in the Syrian city of By the end of January 2019, according to two U.S. officials, more than 10 percent of American equipment and supplies had been removed from Syria, with 3,000 additional personnel brought into the country to facilitate the draw-down of forces. According to their reports, most of the civilians killed were fuel tanker drivers.On 21 May 2015, the United States admitted it "probably" killed two children in bombings near At least 33 people were killed in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike on a school near Raqqa in March 2017The U.S.-led air campaign inflicted heavy losses on the Islamic State and, alongside special forces operations, artillery strikes, and material and intelligence support to the SDF, catalyzed the loss of the bulk of According to CJTF-OIR, by May 2016, ISIL had lost 25 percent of the territory it possessed in Syria since the campaign began, mostly due to advances by YPG/SDF forces with heavy Coalition air support.By 23 March 2019, the day of ISIL's territorial collapse in Syria, CJTF-OIR and partner forces had liberated nearly 110,000 square kilometers (42,471 square miles) from the Islamic State; as a result, 7.7 million people no longer lived under ISIL's "caliphate".The intervention was conducted with strong domestic U.S. support; according to Collapse of Islamic State in Syria (April – Nov. 2017)Pre-coalition arming and training of the Syrian oppositionCoalition arming and training of the Syrian oppositionPre-coalition arming and training of the Syrian oppositionCoalition arming and training of the Syrian opposition It borders Turkey and Israel, has a close relationship with Iran and Russia, plays an influential role in Lebanon, and has a history of rivalry with Iraq.

In May 2011, the United States ordered sanctions against the Syrian government for human rights violations, but Assad continued to attack the protesters. Interests Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? Your Military A look at US involvement in Syria’s civil war. Pentagon leaders were largely mum on Wednesday, adhering to the mandate that U.S. civilian leaders make policy and the military salutes and moves forward. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, called the pullout "catastrophic," and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., deemed it a "disaster in the making."