Washington, DC – The administration of United States President Joe Biden has said it is taking a wait-and-see approach to the fledgling government in Syria, with diplomats in recent weeks holding initial meetings with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) head, and the country’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, as well as the newly appointed Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani.

But since rebels toppled longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in early December, the US has maintained it will keep its deployment of troops in northeast Syria, where US personnel continue to support the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as part of a decade-long anti-ISIL (ISIS) mission.

In fact, the Pentagon in December updated the number of personnel it said were present in the country, saying the number was actually 2,000, not the 900 it had for years reported.

Joshua Landis, the director of the Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, described the update as a not-so-subtle message to various actors in Syria to take a cautious approach towards the SDF and the sprawling, economically significant, territory the group controls as the country’s future takes shapes.

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It also underscores how the US, at least in the waning days of the Biden administration before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, will seek to assert its leverage in forming a new Syria, in part, through having boots on the ground.

“It was a signal to Turkiye, I think, and to the Arab forces that they shouldn’t be attacking the Kurdish region,” Landis said, in reference to the territory the SDF controls, which has a large Syrian Kurdish population.

“It was meant to draw a line that this is something to be negotiated, and it’s not something to work out on the battlefield.”

On January 2, the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that the US military appeared to be bolstering its bases in the region, including, according to the monitor’s sources, building a new base in Ain al-Arab. However, a Pentagon spokesperson on Friday denied that there were plans to establish “some type of base or presence” there.

So, what is behind the plans to continue the US presence in Syria following al-Assad’s toppling?

Stated strategic priorities

The Biden administration’s public messaging has stressed one defining priority in maintaining a troop presence in Syria: The anti-ISIL (ISIS) operation, which was first launched in 2014 under US President Barack Obama.

Speaking to reporters on December 19, Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder also maintained that “there are no plans to cease the Defeat ISIS mission”. Ryder said the increased troop numbers were meant to respond to “emerging mission requirements associated with the Defeat ISIS mission”.

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Mohammed Salih, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, said there are indeed several other unspoken strategic interests behind the US troop deployment. However, the continued threat of an ISIL resurgence should not be discounted.

While ISIL was territorially defeated in 2017, the Pentagon in July said there had been 153 attacks by the group’s fighters in Iraq and Syria in the first six months of the year, a rate double that of 2023.

With the SDF currently overseeing prisons housing thousands of ISIL prisoners, a continued US presence can offer a deterrent to clashes with Turkish-backed groups that could degrade the security situation.

“[Fighting ISIL] is still a very much relevant objective,” Salih told Al Jazeera. “It has been a peaceful, by and large, transitional process so far, but the lack of a central authority also creates very significant opportunities for chaos for a group like ISIS to exploit. They are quite adept in terms of adjusting with the circumstances that they deal with and following this gradual path of making a comeback, as they did in Iraq in 2010, 2011.”

For its part, Turkiye, which supported the HTS-led rebel offensive as well as the Syrian National Army (SNA), has floated a more comprehensive takeover of the anti-ISIL mission.

Turkiye considers The People’s Defense Units (YPG), which makes up the bulk of the SDF’s fighters, a “terrorist organisation”. The Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), meanwhile, is considered a “terrorist” group by both Ankara and Washington.

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However, Turkiye’s opposition to the SDF has long put it at odds with its fellow NATO ally, the US, over the latter’s support for the group.

‘Bargaining chips’

The SDF currently controls a large swath of northeast Syria, accounting for nearly a third of the country’s overall territory. The land it controls contains about 70 percent of Syria’s oil and gas fields.

In combination with relief from the crushing US and foreign sanctions imposed on areas controlled by al-Assad during his rule, control of those oil fields will be essential for Syria’s future economic development. Al-Sharaa and al-Shibani have made that development the main emphasis in their early contacts with media and foreign envoys.

“Syria needs major foreign investment in its oil industry in order to put it back online, to renovate and refurbish it,” Landis, the Center of Middle East Studies director, told Al Jazeera. “Only the Syrian government can do that because the US does not have the authority to sign long term-leases with foreign governments. Neither do the Kurds, because they’re not a recognised government. Those wells belong to the Syrian government.”

The US troop presence in Syria has, in part, aimed to ensure those fossil fuel fields stayed out of the hands of both ISIL, which briefly controlled them, and the al-Assad government.

In 2019, then-US President Trump directly addressed that aim, saying during a White House news conference next to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the US had “left troops behind only for the oil”. A Pentagon official later said that “securing of the oil fields is a subordinate task” to defeating ISIL in Syria.

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Regardless of the US motivation for securing the fields in recent years, their release will be a key leverage point in negotiations going forward, Landis said.

“Sanctions and oil are big bargaining chips,” Landis said.

Those negotiations will include whether the SDF will have a role in the new government. In an early sign of cooperation, al-Sharaa met with SDF delegates last week.

Possible pressure from Israel

Washington could also seek to influence the tact the new Syrian government takes with US foes like Iran and regional allies, most notably Israel, which has seized Syrian territory beyond the occupied Golan Heights since the beginning of December.

“All of this presents an opportunity to reshape or restructure the regional order in a way that would be more in line with US priorities,” Salih, from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said.

While the opposition takeover largely gutted Iranian influence in Syria and cut off Tehran’s supply lines to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, it has also opened the door for increased influence from Turkiye, which has taken a hard line against Israel amid the war in Gaza.

In turn, Israel may heap increased pressure on its “ironclad” ally Washington to extract assurances from Turkiye, according to Landis.

“Israel, obviously America’s closest ally in the region, is very anxious that it’s just trading an Iranian proxy for a Turkish proxy,” Landis said. “So, Israel’s interests are going to be to keep Syria as weak, divided and poor as possible and may indeed be trying to build some pressure for the US to remain in Syria with its troops.”

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But that pressure may run counter to US interests, he noted, particularly with regional Arab allies increasingly embracing al-Sharaa. While US presence may be tolerated in the immediate future, when the newly constituted Syrian government army is ill-equipped to respond to ISIL, there will be an expiration date.

“They can only drag that on for so long before you alienate everybody,” Landis said. “There are just many reasons why America doesn’t want to really ruin the effort to unite Syria.”

The future and Trump

Then there is the question of the pending Trump administration and what the second term of a president known for his volatility in foreign policy will spell for Syria.

Trump has sparingly weighed in on the situation. In his characteristically nebulous style, he wrote on his TruthSocial platform in early December that Syria “is not our fight”.

The statement appears to be in line with Trump’s “America First” pledges to end US military involvement abroad, although his past efforts to withdraw US troops from Syria stalled amid robust opposition from within his own administration.

Given his appointees this time around, Trump appears to be on a similar collision course, according to Salih.

“Figures such as the National Security adviser pick, Congressman Mike Waltz, and the secretary of a state nominee, Marco Rubio, stood strongly and very vocally against Turkish military operations against the SDF… and that the US needs to maintain a military deployment inside Syria,” he said.

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“All of that very much could run against the personal wishes and desires of Trump.”

Further muddying the waters, Trump in December appeared to praise Ankara for its support of the rebel ousting of al-Assad, while describing the toppling as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkiye.

Some observers have speculated that Trump may be more open to turning over anti-ISIL operations than his predecessor, although no clear position has emerged.

“I wouldn’t expect Syria policy to have been settled as of yet,” Salih said.

“I think there would be quite some struggle inside the incoming administration when it comes to Syria policy.”