On Thursday, Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest ranking military officer, made it clear that an order by President Obama on cooperation with Russia in regard to Syria will not be followed by the military.

“The U.S. military role will not include intelligence sharing with the Russians,” Dunford said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on U.S. national security challenges and ongoing military operations, according to the Washington Free Beacon. “I do not believe it would be a good idea to share intelligence with the Russians,” Dunford added.

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The Free Beacon reported:

“The Obama administration’s agreement with Russia, announced on Sept. 9 by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, would involve the United States and Russia working together to develop military strikes against Nusrah, the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, and the Islamic State given a sustained period of reduced violence. The United States and Russia also agreed to share information to establish a “Joint Implementation Center” to cooperate in targeting terror groups. The planned cooperation between the United States and Russia has been subject to criticism, given Moscow’s goal of propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and targeting of U.S.-backed rebels under the guise of combating ISIS.”

“When I look at Russia’s nuclear capability, when I look at their cyber capability, when I look at their developments in undersea warfare, when I look at their patterns of operations—how often they’re operating, the locations they are operating in—these are kinds of operations that we haven’t seen in over 20 years,” Dunford said.

The general continued, “When I look at Mr. [Vladimir] Putin’s activities in Ukraine, in Crimea, in Georgia, that causes me to say that a combination of their behavior as well as their military capability … would cause me to believe that they pose the most significant challenge, potentially the most significant threat, to our national interests.”

Obama’s policy in Syria was questioned during the hearing as at least 400,000 people have been killed in the country and millions have been displaced.

A U.N. aid envoy was hit just days prior near Aleppo which resulted in the death of 20 people after the Syrian military had declared that the ceasefire was over. It has been suspected that Russia was behind the air strike, but neither Gen. Dunford nor Defense Secretary Ash Carter would confirm this.

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Whether the warplanes were Syrian or Russian, both Carter and Dunford said that they held Russia responsible for the attacks.

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