Foreign Policy

Matthew Petti | 12.15.2025 9:16 AM

President Donald Trump declared in his first term that the Islamic State group was defeated and that U.S. troops would leave Syria. This weekend, a gunman linked to the Islamic State group killed two Iowa National Guardsmen and an American translator in Syria.

Syrian and U.S. troops were returning from a joint patrol on Saturday when a shooter attacked them at the gate of a military base in Palmyra, a former stronghold of the Islamic State group. U.S. Central Command described the attacker, who Syrian forces killed, as a "lone ISIS gunman." Trump wrote on social media that the shooting was an attack on America and Syria alike, vowing revenge.

Those statements airbrushed a disturbing fact: The gunman himself was a member of the Syrian armed forces. A Syrian government spokesman, Nour al-Din al-Baba, said in a TV interview that the shooter was already facing an investigation for "extremist" views before the attack. The authorities........

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