HMM: Trump Freezes Syria Aid Funds, Sends Mixed Messages On Anti-ISIS Strategy.

The hold on the money and the status of the anti-ISIS campaign in Syria will be discussed at a National Security Council meeting next week. Trump reportedly ordered the funding to be frozen after reading a report about it in The Washington Post, U.S. officials told Reuters.

The Pentagon has estimated that ISIS has surrendered about 98 percent of its territory in Iraq and Syria, but U.S. military leaders are still concerned by Trump’s calls to reverse course, says Richard Engel, a reporter for MSNBC, who just returned from Syria. They say withdrawing the nearly 2,000 U.S. troops too early would leave the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in a lurch.

“It is a very sensitive time where the U.S. can see the end zone, can smell the finish line, and if we leave prematurely, ISIS comes back and this partner — will be left to fend for themselves against Turkey which is not an adversary that they are in a position to confront,” Engel tells Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd.

If American troops withdraw, the Kurds will have to fend for themselves against Turkish forces, who they are fighting in northern Syria. The U.S. remains stuck in the middle of a conflict between two allies – the Kurds and Turkey – while also weighing the need to maintain some sort of military presence in Syria in order to prevent ISIS from rising again.

As always in the Middle East: It’s complicated.