[Excerpt]
Intl Crisis Group: Al-Tanf, Syria
FLASHPOINT / GLOBAL 22 JAN 2024
Al-Tanf, Syria
I.
Why it Matters
Located in Syria on the Iraqi border and within miles of the Jordanian border, the U.S. garrison at al-Tanf has, since 2016, served as a launching point for counter-ISIS operations and training for Syrian opposition factions fighting the jihadist group. Iranian and Iran-backed forces are deployed in close proximity to the al-Tanf desert outpost, which sits on the strategically significant Baghdad-Damascus highway. U.S. forces in al-Tanf established a 55-km de-confliction zone, beyond which lie an array of forces described as either “pro-regime” or “Iran-backed” that have set up checkpoints in the area. Several incidents in recent months underscore al-Tanf’s potential as a flashpoint between U.S. and Iranian and/or Iran-backed forces.
II.
Recent Developments
22 January 2024
The U.S. sanctioned “Iraqi airline Fly Baghdad and its CEO for providing assistance to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and its proxy groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon”, in addition to listing “two Iraq-registered aircraft owned by Fly Baghdad… as blocked property”. The U.S. also designated “three leaders and supporters of one of the IRGC-QF’s main Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), as well as a business that moves and launders funds for KH”. The State Department contended that “the IRGC-QF and Iran-aligned militia groups pose a significant threat to the Middle East region… The U.S. remains committed to exposing and taking actions against individuals and groups that abuse their local economies and engage in illegal activities that support terrorist groups destabilising the region”.

A Direct Confrontation Could Occur. Now that ISIS’s territorial control is all but eliminated, attention among most relevant actors will shift more markedly toward means of improving the balance of power on the ground in their favour, so as to strengthen military positioning and negotiating leverage. Iranian forces and their allies might seek to target U.S. forces in and around al-Tanf in retaliation against U.S. actions elsewhere or in an effort to drive the U.S. out of Syria. There is no clear military path to the latter objective, as the U.S. can continue to destroy forces that cross into exclusion zone for the foreseeable future. Yet this could strengthen more hawkish elements in Washington and invite the U.S. to take retaliatory measures of its own, thus starting an escalatory spiral.
cont...
https://www.crisisgroup.org/trigger-list/iran-usisrael-trigger-list/flashpoints/al-tanf-syria