{"id":379777,"date":"2018-10-05T15:18:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T14:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/presstv-us-cant-drive-iran-out-of-syria-ex-pentagon-chief\/"},"modified":"2018-10-05T15:18:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T14:18:20","slug":"presstv-us-cant-drive-iran-out-of-syria-ex-pentagon-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/presstv-us-cant-drive-iran-out-of-syria-ex-pentagon-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"PressTV-US can\u2019t drive Iran out of Syria: Ex-Pentagon chief"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>Former US secretary of defense Chuck Hagel says the limited number of American troops in northeastern Syria can do nothing to drive Iranian forces out of the Arab country.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe\u00a0US\u00a0doesn\u2019t even control half of Syria. You\u2019ve got 2,000 [US] troops up in the northeast corner. I mean, come on, you\u2019re not going to drive Iranians out of Syria with 2,000 American troops,\u201d Hagel said, rejecting US National Security Advisor John Bolton\u2019s call for the removal of Iranian forces from Syria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s complete folly to think you\u2019re going to threaten the Syrians or the Russians or the Iranians into\u00a0anything,\u201d Hagel said in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defenseone.com\/politics\/2018\/10\/its-complete-folly-hagel-says-trump-administration-cant-threaten-iran-out-syria\/151808\/\">interview<\/a> with <em>Defense One<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>He said the Iranians live in this region as opposed to the Americans that had involved themselves in the Syrian war from afar.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnless you\u2019re going to somehow eliminate the geopolitical realities of that\u2014well, good luck Mr. Bolton. There is no other way around this, you\u2019re&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presstv.ir\/Detail\/2018\/10\/05\/576111\/Iran-US-Syria-hagel\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former US secretary of defense Chuck Hagel says the limited number of American troops in northeastern Syria can do nothing to drive Iranian forces out of the Arab country. \u201cThe\u00a0US\u00a0doesn\u2019t even control half of Syria. You\u2019ve got 2,000 [US] troops up in the northeast corner. I mean, come on, you\u2019re not going to drive Iranians [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-379777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}