Photo credit: @realdonaldtrump | Twitter

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, US President Donald Trump is about to do a 180° turn on the US’s Syria strategy, calling for an early exit from the country in a reversal of what former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had always promised.

Mr Trump has furthermore ordered the suspension of over $200 million in funds that were budgeted to be used as "recovery efforts" in the war-torn country (as announced by former Secretary of State Mr Tillerson in February at a meeting of the global coalition against Islamic State).

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The President gave a thunderous speech in Ohio, touting military successes in the Middle East. <a href="https://t.co/WDutyvzkSR">https://t.co/WDutyvzkSR</a></p>— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/979737107420758016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 30, 2018</a></blockquote>

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Already during a speech in Ohio this week, the US President said: “We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon.”

“Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon, very soon, we’re coming out.”

“We’re going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council confirmed the news, stating that “in line with the President’s guidance, the Department of State continually re-evaluates appropriate assistance levels and how best they might be utilized, which they do on an ongoing basis.”

<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Pres. Trump: "We'll be coming out of Syria very soon. Let the other people take care of it now…We're going to have 100% of the caliphate, as they call it —sometimes referred to as land. We're taking it all back." <a href="https://t.co/Ilnp6RybqC">pic.twitter.com/Ilnp6RybqC</a></p>— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/979429696042450944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 29, 2018</a></blockquote>

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Furthermore, the White House official quoted in the Wall Street Journal report stated that the US President had inside the Oval Office always claimed that “once ISIS and its remnants are destroyed that the United States would be looking toward having countries in the region playing a larger role in ensuring security and leaving it at that.”

Source:

https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/30/17180514/trump-syria-troops-remove-speech