Donald Trump asked Saudi Arabia’s King Salman for $4 billion in December, in return for the end of the US presence in Syria’s seven-year conflict.

US officials said Trump believed he had a deal for the money to rebuild parts of Syria taken from the Islamic State and now under the control of the American-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. This would pursue a goal of preventing the Assad regime, backed by Russia and Iran, from claiming the areas in northern and eastern Syria.

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the effective Saudi ruler, arrives in Washington on Monday for discussion.

The $4 billion requested by Trump is in comparison with $200 million announced by the US last month for “stabilization” after all ISIS areas — including the city of Raqqa — were taken in a campaign between autumn 2015 and early 2018.

Officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

US Uncertainty

Syria is now a fragmented country, with the Assad regime holding much of it but the opposition, now linked with Turkey, controlling much of the northwest — and taking more territory with an offensive against the Kurdish canton of Afrin — and Kurdish groups holding much of the north and northeast.

But, asked on Tuesday in a Congressional hearing if Bashar al-Assad had “won”, Gen. Joseph Votel, head of US Central Command, replied, “I do not think that is too strong of a statement. I think [Russia and Iran] have provided him with the wherewithal to be ascendant at this point.”

Senator Lindsey Graham asked Votel, “And it is not your mission in Syria to deal with the Iranian-Assad-Russia problem?” Graham asked Votel. “That’s not in your ‘things to do,’ right?”

The general replied, “That’s correct, senator.”

Votel declined to say whether he believed the US military should pursue that broader objective. And asked whether it was still policy that Assad must leave power, Votel said: “I don’t know that that’s our particular policy at this particular point. Our focus remains on the defeat of ISIS.”

Meanwhile, US officials quarrelled with each other about the course of the conflict.

A “senior official” said the Syrian Democratic Forces should cut a deal with the Assad regime, but a “second senior administration official” rejected the idea:

[The regime is] weaker than it has ever been, certainly in this half of the civil w

If we compare it to his pre-civil-war position, [Assad] controls about half or less of prewar territory, less than half of the arable land and far less than half of strategic resources like oil and gas.

A “third administration” disputed that assessment:

Really?

That might be true if you were to remove the Russians and the Iranians and Hezbollah,” the ­Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia that has been a decisive fighting force in Syria. Without them, Assad “would fall almost immediately.”

But with them, the official said, Assad appears to be making strong progress, destroying evermore rebels in the west and expanding his territory eastward to within miles of where the SDF and its U.S. backers are still fighting the Islamic State.