On June 14, the U.S. Air Force deployed fifth-generation F-22 Raptors to Syria to deter what U.S. Central Command described as “increasingly unsafe and unprofessional behavior by Russian aircraft in the region.” The Raptor, an advanced air-superiority fighter that is renowned for its stealth capabilities, is intended to increase the U.S. military’s ability to defend the 900 U.S. servicemembers that remain deployed in the war-torn country.

The last time the United States sent F-22 fighters to the Middle East was last year, when the combat jets flew to the United Arab Emirates in a show of force following drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthis. However, it is not the aircraft’s first stint in Syria. In the spring of 2018, the F-22 provided “defensive counterair” capabilities by holding Syrian air defense assets at risk during the U.S.-led, multinational strikes against Syrian military targets in response to Damascus’ suspected chemical weapons attacks. Then, in the fall, the F-22 completed its first “combat surge” in Syria, in which U.S. Raptor pilots flew “deep into Syrian territory, facing both enemy fighters and surface-to-air missile systems” and deterred nearly 600 Syrian, Iranian, and Russian combat aircraft from threatening U.S. military personnel.

The F-22 has its work cut out for it in Syria, whether in deterring the Russian military or aiding the broader U.S. military mission. Indeed, despite these deployments in defense of the years-long U.S. military presence on the ground, the Air Force reports that Russia has stopped adhering to agreed-upon deconfliction agreements in Syria’s busy skies and that Russian aircraft are harassing U.S. personnel with increasing frequency. The United States has long been concerned about Russian harassment of U.S. forces but has recently observed a “significant spike” in Russian aerial aggression in Syria. On the ground, too, U.S. servicemembers face a variety of threats from Russian forces, which have physically harassed and threatened Americans across the country.

Russia maintains over 2,500 military personnel in Syria in support of its ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which for all intents and purposes has won his country’s civil war after more than a decade of conflict. Russia and Syria have long disparaged U.S. troops as “occupiers” and insisted that they leave the country. The U.S. refusal has put Americans in harm’s way, and not just from Moscow and Damascus. Iran, another Syrian and Russian ally, has regularly targeted the U.S. military as well. As recently as last March, for instance, a drone attack of “Iranian origin” killed one U.S. contractor and wounded six others in Syria, raising questions about the logic and sustainability of a U.S. presence that has persisted in Syria since 2015.

The United States government consistently points to the threats posed by the remnants of the Islamic State when it justifies the U.S. presence in Syria. To be sure, even after losing its territorial holdings in Iraq and Syria, the terrorist group’s resiliency continues to pose a complex challenge for the U.S.-led multinational coalition, which carried out 313 anti-ISIS operations in 2022. Yet the United States faces more and direr threats from Russia, Iran, and the Syrian government than ISIS itself, which has lost its once-formidable capability to carry out coordinated offensive operations in the Middle East or farther abroad.

In fact, ISIS cannot be defeated by military action alone: tens of thousands of ISIS prisoners, including many foreign fighters and their families, are languishing in Iraqi and Syrian detention centers and prisons. Until these people are repatriated to their countries of origin, they will be at risk of radicalization and recruitment by jihadists, and ISIS will continue to target the prisons in its efforts to free its comrades. As U.S. policymakers should have learned from the U.S. war efforts against Al Qaeda or the Taliban, ISIS is not a problem that the United States can kill its way out of.

However, much like the Taliban has proven its commitment to fighting ISIS even after the United States left Afghanistan, there is reason to believe that Syria, Iran, and Russia will not tolerate ISIS in the Middle East either. Americans should recall that Iran was instrumental in the U.S.-supported fight against ISIS in Iraq and opposed the same terrorist presence in Afghanistan, while Russia has fought ISIS in its efforts to secure Assad’s rule.

It is additionally worth remembering that when President Donald Trump ordered a snap withdrawal from Syria in 2019, it was Russia who moved its troops into the abandoned U.S. outposts and called for de-escalation between the Kurds and Turkey in the northeast. Moscow’s subsequent, fruitful negotiations with Turkey then led to an agreement that prevented a Turkish military operation against the Kurds in exchange for the latter retreating from the Syrian-Turkish border. Turkey, which was responsible for killing ISIS’s latest leader last month, is committed to combatting the same Syrian Kurds that the United States has been supporting since 2014—greatly straining the U.S.-Turkish relationship. This is just one more Gordian knot that the United States has been trying to untie in Syria—without much success.

The fact of the matter is that the United States is an outsider with few friends in Syria. As an uninvited guest in the country, it remains a target of Syrian, Russian, and Iranian military pressure. Its own allies and partners, from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia and the broader Arab League, have begun welcoming Damascus back into the regional fold with open arms. Its policy of regime change, which began under the Obama administration but has continued in different forms, has long failed. Far from Russia being isolated—even after its invasion of Ukraine—Moscow continues to be an indispensable player in Syria, for Damascus and Tehran as much as Jerusalem and Ankara. The countries of the Middle East understand that the United States will not stay in Syria indefinitely, and they are hedging their bets accordingly. But America has not adapted in kind; instead, it has stayed the course, enduring casualties while vainly searching for a way out. But after nine years of war, only one thing is clear: no amount of F-22s can help America defeat the consequences of its own policy failings.

Adam Lammon is a former executive editor at The National Interest and an analyst of Middle Eastern affairs based in Washington, DC. The opinions expressed in this article are his own. Follow him on Twitter @AdamLammon.

Image: Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.