In an article published last week, Newsweek said American and American-supported Syrian officials feel disillusioned about America’s goals in the country. The website cited an anonymous senior United States intelligence official who described the US military mission there as “a clusterf**k”.

Officially, the goal of the US Department of Defense’s mission in Syria is to “ensure the enduring defeat” of the Islamic State. On the political level, the US seeks the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the departure of all Iranian and Iranian-backed forces from the country. Last year, however, US President Donald Trump seemed to suddenly change the Pentagon’s mission, by telling reporters that the US military was in Syria only to secure access to the oil and natural gas fields that lay in the country’s northeast. He repeated that statement in August of this year.

This goal appears to have been adopted by the Pentagon as its new mission. Currently what remains of the US military presence in Syria is concentrated around a cluster of oil and gas fields in the northeastern part of the country. Sources told Newsweek that the US troops feel “stranded” and “forgotten” in Syria, and are virtually surrounded by numerically dominant Russian and Iranian forces. US allies in the area are shifting their alliances and looking to Russia, seeing Washington as a non-dependable actor.

Meanwhile, Moscow and Tehran have assumed leading roles in bringing rival forces to the table, while also fighting what is left of the Islamic State. Several meetings between representatives from rival factions, including the Assad government, pro-Turkish militias, and the opposition Syrian Democratic Forces, have taken place under Russian tutelage in the past year. The US has not participated in these negotiations, said Newsweek.