Trump's Iran warmongering has 'deeply compromised' the military's ability to fight ISIS: Counterterrorism expert

A counterterrorism expert believes that President Donald Trump's warmongering against Iran has deeply damaged the American military's ability to fight against the Islamic State terrorist organization.

Luke Hartig, who previously served as Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC), writes at Just Security that the president's decision to assassinate Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani has forced American forces in Iraq to hunker down in their bases even as the Iraqi parliament votes to expel them from the country.

"Effective counterterrorism policy is about much more than conducting drone strikes and deploying commandos; it’s about setting the diplomatic and geopolitical conditions for counterterrorism to succeed," he writes. "I take no pleasure in observing that President Trump apparently fails to grasp the importance of any of this foreign policy work when it comes to ISIS. For him, the entirety of the counterterrorism campaign reduces to dead terrorists."

He then goes through all the ways Trump has damaged America with his reckless actions: He's made Americans around the world targets of an Iranian military cent on revenge, he has poisoned the relationship with Iraq, and he has strained the relationships of other western allies, most notably in Europe.

"The bottom line is that there won’t be much counterterrorism going on in Iraq and Syria any time soon," he concludes.

Read the whole analysis here.