Analysis: Iran role in Syria key item at Trump-Putin summit
BEIRUT — When President Donald Trump meets Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday, the Syrian conflict will be one of the most immediately pressing issues on a wide-ranging agenda.
As fighting wanes after seven years of war, the U.S. has made curtailing Iran’s influence in post-war Syria a strategic objective — one strongly backed by Israel. And U.S. and Russian officials have signalled that a broad framework for such a deal is likely to be the main outcome of the summit.
Any agreement is likely to be general in nature, and discussions are likely to be centred more on limiting Iran’s presence rather than ending it, analysts say.
A full withdrawal of Iranian-backed forces from Syria is a virtual non-starter. After years of ruinous civil war, Iran and its proxy militias, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, have built up a formidable presence stretching from the Iraqi border through central Syria to Lebanon.