If there was any doubt that our objective in Syria was anything other than regime change, today's news officially ended that.

Colonel Muhanad al Talaa, commander of the Pentagon-backed Maghawir al Thawra group, told Reuters the eight days of drills that ended this week at the U.S. military outpost in Tanf were the first such exercises with live-fire air and ground assault, involving hundreds of U.S. troops and rebel fighters.

“These exercises have a big importance and have beefed up the defenses of the area and raised the combat capabilities and morale and that of civilians in the area,” Talaa told Reuters by phone from Tanf, near Syria’s borders with Jordan and Iraq.

Just a few days ago the Pentagon denied that there were militants in the Al-Tanf area. Now it turns out that the denial was said at the exact same time as the live-fire drills with the non-existent militants.
The Pentagon has an interesting justification for this development.

A U.S. military spokesman said the exercises were a show of force and that the Pentagon had notified Moscow through “deconfliction” channels to prevent “miscommunication or escalate tension”.

“The exercise was conducted to reinforce our capabilities and ensure we are ready to respond to any threat to our forces within our area of operations’” Colonel Sean Ryan told Reuters in an email response to a question on the exercises.
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After Islamic State were driven out, U.S.-led coalition warplanes struck Iranian-backed militias on several occasions to prevent them advancing, in what Washington has described as self-defense.

Tanf lies on the strategic Damascus-Baghdad highway, once a major supply route for Iranian weapons into Syria.

This makes the base a bulwark against Iran and part of a larger campaign against Iran’s military expansion in the Middle East.

Control of the area has long been a goal of the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies.

Rebels say the U.S. military’s new policy to bolster Tanf’s capabilities is a big shift.

“The American position has changed completely toward the Iranians. Before it was just putting a line to the Iranians not to approach the areas,” Talaa added.

So we are now fighting side-by-side with jihadists against Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran.
What could go wrong?