Vice News quotes Rafik Hariri Center Resident Fellow Faysal Itani on the Obama administration’s decision to send US special operations forces to Syria to combat ISIS:
The senior administration official said the role of the US special operations forces will be to coordinate these local groups with the US-led coalition’s anti-IS efforts.
Faysal Itani, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said this may be the most significant change to the US approach.
“We know that the United States has conducted hostage rescue raids but this is a much broader agenda,” he said. “We also know the president’s deep aversion to any US action that may lead to ‘mission creep,’ so I imagine this approach was adopted out of dire necessity – and not particularly enthusiastically.”