Citing U.S. President Donald Trump’s openly stated plan to maintain a troop presence in Syria with the sole purpose of plundering the country’s oil reserves, a top Syrian government official said America has “absolutely no right” to the nation’s natural resources and warned of “popular opposition and operations” against foreign occupiers. “It is our oil,” Bouthaina Shaaban, a political and media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told NBC News in an interview Tuesday. “He’s talking about stealing it,” Shaaban said of Trump. “Our land should be totally and completely liberated from foreign occupiers, whether they are terrorists, or the Turks, or the Americans.”
— source nbcnews.com | Dec 26, 2019