President Joe Biden’s administration has outlined what it argues is the legal justification for the U.S. military presence in Syria as Damascus ramps up calls for the United States to withdraw amid deepening unrest in the region.
A week after Syria’s Mission to the United Nations told Newsweek that the presence of U.S. troops in the country “is illegal, illegitimate, and constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and international law,” a State Department spokesperson said the Department of Defense’s deployment—officially “for the sole purpose” of defeating the Islamic State militant group but increasingly mired in clashes with Iran-backed militias amid the ongoing war in Gaza—was well rooted in both U.S. and international law.
“As a matter of domestic law, U.S. ‘defeat ISIS’ activities are authorized by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force,” the State Department spokesperson told Newsweek. “We also have specific domestic statutory authorities that authorize DOD to provide support to the SDF’s ‘defeat ISIS’ operations.”
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