ISIS: Top US general disagrees with Trump over Syria troop pullout

Muscat, Oman CNN — The US commander who has been leading the war against ISIS told CNN Friday that he disagreed with Donald Trump’s decision in December to pull troops out of Syria and warned that the terror group was far from defeated, in a stark difference of opinion with the President. “When I say, ‘we have defeated them,’ I want to ensure that means they do not have the capability to plot or direct attacks against the US or our allies,” Votel said. “They still have this very powerful ideology, so they can inspire.” The commander of US Central Command had previously said that he “was not consulted” before Trump’s controversial announcement late last year that the US would rapidly withdraw its troops from the war-torn country. On Friday, Votel also said that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces – who launched an offensive to oust ISIS from its only remaining enclave in Syria last weekend – could not defeat the terror group without continued American assistance. “They still require our enablement and our assistance with this,” Votel said, adding that the US military was still in the midst of executing a “well-crafted military campaign.” “We want to be able to be controlled or addressed by the indigenous partners, whether that’s the Iraqi security forces in Iraq, or the Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria, that when they are capable of handing this threat on their own, without our assistance, that will be another key criteria indicating to me that we have accomplished our mission of defeat of ISIS.” Concern over Iran’s ‘ability to innovate’ Votel also said Iran posed a growing threat to US partners in the region and expressed concern over its development of advanced weapons, though he acknowledged that Tehran had held up its side of the nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from last year.