Charles Lister,
When U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly appointed special envoy to Syria, Thomas Barrack, paid his first visit to Damascus on May 29, he flew into the country on U.S. military helicopters from Jordan. He was accompanied by two State Department staff members but was most closely flanked by the U.S. military’s counter-Islamic State coalition leaders—Maj. Gen. Kevin Leahy and Brig. Gen. Michael Brooks.
Those optics were telling. While Barrack has justifiably trumpeted the extraordinary diplomatic and economic openings provided to Syria by the Trump administration in recent weeks, the Islamic State challenge arguably remains the dominant factor still guiding U.S. policy planning around Syria and the United States’ role in its future.
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