The offensive violates an agreement between the U.S., Russia and neighboring Jordan, whose monarch met with President Donald Trump on Monday. The nearly year-old agreement is intended to preserve the status quo in Syria's southwest, but recent public and private statements suggest the U.S. commitment is slipping.
Although the administration has been consistent in criticizing Russia for backing Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces' advance into the "de-escalation zone" in the province of Daraa, over the past two weeks U.S. officials in Washington and in the Middle East have steadily walked back on warnings of American retaliation for violations.
And as the situation became more critical Monday, threatening an influx of refugees fleeing the fighting into Jordan, Amman announced it would not take in the newly displaced.
Trump has made no secret of his desire to extricate the United States from Syria. The White House said Syria would be on the agenda of Trump's talks with Jordanian King Abdullah II but neither leader mentioned that country in their brief comments to reporters. Trump said only that a "lot of progress" had been made in the Middle East. He did not identify specific areas of improvement.
Earlier Monday, however, the State Department said the situation in southwest Syria remained a matter of serious concern, although it pointedly did not repeat earlier threats of a U.S. response that had been standard in such comments since May.
The quiet backtrack has occurred over the course of the last month, as what started as allusions to a potential U.S. military response evolved into mere expressions of concern.
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