US withdrawal from Syria doesn’t change support for Israel: Pompeo

The U.S. military’s withdrawal from Syria will do little to change Washington’s support for Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday.

According to the AFP News Agency, Pompeo reportedly reiterated this point to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while he met with him on the sidelines of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s inauguration.

“The counter-ISIS campaign continues, our efforts to counter Iranian aggression continues, and our commitment to Middle East stability and protection of Israel continues in the same way before that decision was made,” he said. ISIS is another term for the radical militant Islamic State group (IS).

The fact that the issue was the prime topic of conversation between Pompeo and Netanyahu underlined the uncertainty thrown up by Trump’s December 19 decision — announced on Twitter — to withdraw US troops from northeast Syria, where they had been battling IS remnants.

“We have a lot to discuss. We’re going to be discussing our, the intense cooperation between Israel and the United States which will also deal with the questions following the decision, the American decision, on Syria,” Netanyahu said.

He said the talks would look at “how to intensify even further our intelligence and operational cooperation in Syria and elsewhere to block Iranian aggression in the Middle East.”