The plan calls for the base to be used for logistics, surveillance, refueling and humanitarian operations, with Syria retaining full sovereignty over the facility, the people said.
The airbase is located near southern Syria, which could become a demilitarized zone as part of a non-aggression agreement. The administration of US President Donald Trump is acting as a mediator between the two countries.
The agency recalled that Trump plans to meet with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on November 10 at the White House. This will be the Syrian leader's first visit to Washington.
Sources said the US military had already conducted test flights and inspections of the airbase's runway, and negotiations over its use had been going on for months. They clarify that the exact date of the deployment of troops is still unknown.
The media recalled that the US already has troops in northeast Syria, helping Kurdish forces fight the Islamic State (ISIS), and the new presence in Damascus follows the pattern of monitoring ceasefire agreements as in Lebanon and Israel.
Context
The military conflict in Syria has been ongoing since 2011. Syrian government troops, opposition forces, radical Islamists, Kurds, Islamic State militants, as well as the armed forces of the Russian Federation, the United States, Iran and Turkey took part in the fighting at various times.
At the end of November 2024, factions opposing Assad launched an offensive on Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, controlled by government forces since 2016. And already on December 8, Syrian rebels announced the liberation of Damascus from the regime of fugitive ex-president Bashar al-Assad.
Assad himself disappeared. On December 8, the Russian Federation recognized that he was on Russian territory. On December 11, Bloomberg wrote that the Russian authorities convinced Assad that he was losing the war to the rebels and offered him evacuate safely.
On December 12, Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources familiar with this issue, reported that after the fall of the Assad regime, Russia is approaching agreements with the country’s new leadership to maintain its main military bases in the Middle East.
