Pentagon officials, asserted U.S. military authority over Syrian oil fields because U.S. forces are acting under the goal of “protecting Americans from terrorist activity”.
The US military would be with in their rights to shoot any representative of the Syrian government who attempted to retake control over that country’s national resource.
The comments came from Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman and Navy Rear Admiral William D. Byrne Jr. during a press briefing in which the two men were asked repeatedly about the legal basis the U.S. is claiming to control Syrian oil fields.
The briefing came less than two weeks after Defense Secretary Mark Esper said, “That the US mission is to secure the oil fields” in the Deir ez-Zor area of eastern Syria.
President Donald Trump’s comments before and after that remark — “We’re going to be protecting [the oil], and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.
Hoffman repeated his stance that the operations were a part of the effort to defeat Assad and stopping him from obtaining the oil fields is an effort to prevent Syria from obtaining revenue so that they can fund their terrorist operations globally?
Sott Network / ABC Flash Point Blog News 2019.
