The Tanf military base is a lonely, desert oasis roughly 10 miles inside Syria near the Jordan border, and about 100 miles south of Palmyra.

If you listen to the American media you'd think that Russian troops are on the march and America is in imminent danger.
Just consider this article from today.

I would say that Washington politicians are shameless, except that this is beyond shameless. You have to be totally divorced from reality to do this.

The thing with sanctions is that the threat is supposed to be enough to make others comply. If you have to use sanctions, you should never have to use them against your allies. The worst case scenario is for your allies to simply ignore your sanctions threat, effectively calling your bluff.
That's what is happening today.

The news media has finally caught up with what I've been pointing out for weeks (here and here) - that our economic sanctions aren't working. In fact, the sanctions are completely backfiring.
Headlines from this morning spells this out in no uncertain terms.