What now? The Russians will try to take revenge, one way or another. President Trump will be tested. In a phone conversation with Putin on Monday, the president and the czar didn’t discuss the events in Syria, according to the Russian side. Hard to believe, but what really matters will be what happens next.

Nor did this event happen in a strategic vacuum. Almost simultaneously, Iran tested Israel by sending a drone into Israeli airspace. And Iran fared even worse than did those Russian yahoos with tanks.

After butchering Syrian civilians with impunity, it must have shocked the Kremlin’s gangsters-in-uniform to face US airpower, but the Iranians in Syria paid a still-higher price: The IDF tore apart Assad’s air defenses and hit Iranian command-and-control nodes. We killed sergeants, the Israelis killed colonels.

Iran wants Israel destroyed and all Jews dead. Putin wants the US out of Syria, but doesn’t really mind if Israel weakens Iran’s grip at this point — leaving Assad more reliant on Russia. Lot of moving parts in this scenario.

But what’s clear as vodka is that Putin was willing to risk a large number of his men in the hope they’d kill enough American advisers to make us flee Syria. It didn’t work, but Putin won’t give up. He’s paid a much higher price in Syria than he initially expected, and he wants a return on his investment. He’ll try other ways to drive us out, perhaps using terror attacks to kill Americans.

https://nypost.com/2018/02/13/russians-attacked-american-troops-on-putins-orders/