While airstrikes seem a likely response to the attack, it’s unclear if the move will have its intended effect, according to Rosemary Kelanic, the director of the Middle East program at Defense Priorities.
Kelanic predicted airstrikes or commando raids will be Trump’s most likely response, similar to what Washington has done “over the past couple of years every so often, where the U.S. goes in and claims that they killed a number of ISIS militants. … I don’t expect that it will be anything more than that, because there just isn’t anything to target that’s left besides these sort of isolated pockets of people that could be sympathetic.”
Kelanic, whose organization has advocated for pulling troops from Syria, said the attack should prompt the administration to do a withdrawal as “it demonstrates that keeping these indefinite deployments isn’t costless.”
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