{"id":27523,"date":"2018-12-31T09:22:57","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T09:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27523"},"modified":"2018-12-31T09:22:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T09:22:57","slug":"syrias-assad-authorizes-iraqi-forces-to-strike-daesh-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27523","title":{"rendered":"Syria\u2019s Assad authorizes Iraqi forces to strike Daesh in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nDAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Assad authorized Iraqi forces on Sunday to attack the Daesh group inside Syria without waiting for permission from authorities in Damascus, the state news agency SANA said, as the two allies coordinate their fight against extremists ahead of a planned US withdrawal from Syria.
The announcement highlights the close relations between the two neighboring Arab countries that are both allied with Iran. Daesh once controlled large parts of both countries when it declared a caliphate in 2014.
Iraqi warplanes and artillery have in the past pounded IS positions inside Syria after getting the green light from Syrian authorities.
The extremists have been defeated in Iraq but still hold a small area in Syria close to the Iraqi border.
On Saturday Assad received a letter from Iraq\u2019s Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi calling for both countries\u2019 coordination in \u201cfighting terrorism.\u201d
President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that the US will withdraw all of its 2,000 forces in Syria. The main US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces has expressed concerns that the US plans to pull out could lead to the revival of Daesh saying that the extremists have not been defeated yet in Syria.
In Washington, Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he is going to encourage Trump to sit down with generals and reconsider pulling troops from Syria.
\u201cSlow this down, make sure that we get it right, make sure Daesh never comes back,\u201d Graham said on CNN using a different acronym to refer to Daesh. \u201cDon\u2019t turn Syria over to the Iranians. That\u2019s a nightmare for Israel.\u201d
Graham said that it\u2019s possible for the US to reduce its footprint in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and that he supports the goal of having allies \u201cdo more and pay more.\u201d But he added that he also sees the US military playing a role in all three countries for \u201ca while to come.\u201d
\u201cI want to fight the war in the enemy\u2019s backyard, not ours,\u201d Graham said.
Graham has been a confidant of Trump\u2019s, but it\u2019s unclear how much Trump will listen to him on Syria. Still, Graham said he\u2019s generally pleased with Trump\u2019s foreign policy initiatives.
\u201cAll I ask him to do is to make sure we don\u2019t fumble the ball inside the 10-yard line, sit down with the generals,\u201d Graham said.
In Tehran, Iran and Syria signed Sunday a long-term strategic and economic agreement as the war winds down in Syria where Iran and Russia were the main backers of Assad\u2019s government since the crisis began nearly eight years ago.
Syria\u2019s SANA news agency quoted Syrian Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade Mohammed Samer Al-Khalil, who signed the agreement, as saying that the deal includes \u201cfull cooperation on the financial and banking levels.\u201d He added that this would allow Iranian companies to be present through investments in Syria.
The Syrian government has gained control of large parts of the country with the help of Iran and Russia and some Arab countries, including the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, have reopened their embassies in Damascus.
The Syrian government estimates reconstruction of the war-torn country will cost some $200 billion dollars and last 15 years.
Al-Khalil said that \u201cpriority in the reconstruction of Syria will be given to Iranian public and private companies,\u201d according to SANA\u2019s report.
SANA also reported that a technical delegation form the UAE visited Damascus International Airport to evaluate it in preparation for resumption of flights between the Gulf nation and Syria.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Assad authorized Iraqi forces on Sunday to attack the Daesh group inside Syria without waiting for permission from authorities in Damascus, the state news agency SANA said, as the two allies coordinate their fight against extremists ahead of a planned US withdrawal from Syria.The announcement highlights the close relations between the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}