U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived on Tuesday in Jordan on a West Asia tour to show commitment to the region after President Donald Trump’s surprise decision to withdraw troops from war-torn Syria.
Mr. Pompeo, on his longest trip since taking the post last year, pledged that the Islamic State group (IS) would not be allowed to regroup following a string of battlefield defeats.
But in a stark reminder of the lingering threat, a war monitor reported that the jihadists had killed 23 U.S.-backed fighters in a counterattack in eastern Syria aimed at defending their last bastion.
After setting off on the trip to eight countries, he told reporters he would show that “the United States is still committed to all the missions that we’ve signed up for with them over the past two years”.
Highlighting that the IS emerged during the tenure of Mr. Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, Mr. Pompeo said the campaign to destroy the movement’s self-styled “caliphate” in war-battered Syria has been “enormously successful.”
