TEHRAN - As the Arab League welcomed Damascus back, the U.S. is expanding its illegal occupation of Syria.

This month saw Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warmly welcomed by Saudi Arabia to the Arab League Summit in the port city of Jeddah.

It happened 12 years after Syria was suspended from the pan-Arab bloc and followed a quick succession of bilateral meetings between Arab governments and their Syrian counterpart that saw the restoration of diplomatic ties.

The rapprochement indicates a new projection for West Asia that could see the region distancing itself from foreign powers.

On Thursday, a Saudi delegation arrived in Syria to discuss arrangements for the reopening of its embassy in Damascus following its closure more than a decade ago.

This has all drawn anger from the United States, which has publicly displayed its strong opposition to any Arab country restoring ties with the Syrian government, in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The main reason for the White House opposition is that the U.S. has been trying for more than a decade now, but without any luck, to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad through backing foreign terror groups.

As the terrorists failed to hold on to the territory they had occupied, the U.S. illegally invaded Syria in 2014 under the pretext of fighting terrorists, which it never did.

That job was successfully done by the Syrian forces and its allies, and today the terrorists have been mostly defeated, with the exception of the northwestern province of Idlib, where Daesh and its affiliates are clinging on to.

Now reports have surfaced that the U.S. is building another military base in the northern province of Raqqa to expand its presence.

There are several reasons for the illegal U.S. military occupation, but fighting terrorists (as Washington alleges) is certainly not one of them.

The terrorists are mainly holed up in Syria's western province of Idlib. The U.S. military has not moved in that direction, nor has it targeted Idlib. Furthermore, the terror groups have never targeted the U.S. military, just like they have never targeted Israel.

It hasn't been lost on the U.S. establishment that Syria plays a major role in the resistance against the Israeli regime.

As the Arab world welcomes Damascus back to the fold, Syria has an even greater opportunity to grow in power and expand its influential anti-Israel role, having successfully defeated the foreign terrorist plot hatched against the country since 2011.

The U.S. has at least 28 declared bases and other military sites in Syria as a sovereign state. They are distributed over three provinces, with the majority in the east and northeastern provinces of the country. There are 17 declared bases in al-Hasakah, nine in Deir Ezzor and two in Homs.

All U.S. military bases serve a specific agenda to weaken Syria after it successfully thwarted the foreign-backed terrorist plot.

The largest American military base is located in Syria's eastern al-Omar oilfield.

It is no coincidence that is it where one of Syria's largest oil reserves is.  It is on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.

The U.S. army is occupying this base for two specific reasons. One is looting the oil reserves, which Syrian officials say is to the tune of more than ten billion dollars.

The oil is being stolen to prevent the Syrian government from accessing it and bringing vital services back to its people in the war-ravaged country. This is Washington's attempt to prevent Syria from prospering.

The other sinister move to plunder the Syrian oil, which breaks all international laws and principles, is to use the money from the oil to finance the illegal U.S. military occupation. The oil is regularly transferred in large convoys to the northern Iraqi Kurdish region.

Other bases that are located in northeastern regions and occupied by U.S.-backed militants, also have Syrian oil reserves that the U.S. is plundering to finance its occupation activities.

Apart from the Caesars Act passed by the U.S. Congress, this aspect of the occupation is all to do with the U.S. economic war against Syria.

Another well-known U.S. military base is al-Tanf, which sits on the desert that spreads to the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordan border.

According to Iraqi and Syrian officials, the U.S. is using al-Tanf to destabilize the two countries' borders by, among other measures, facilitating the transfer of terrorists from one side to the other.

This is while Iraqi and Syrian government officials already have an agreement to jointly cooperate in securing their border.

On Wednesday, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin accused the U.S. of using al-Tanf, also referred to as the al-Tanf garrison, to carry out disruptive actions against Russian sites in Syria.

"According to our information, the U.S. al-Tanf military base located on the border of Syria, Jordan and Iraq is used to train ISIL (Daesh) militants for carrying out subversive acts; moreover, not only on Syrian territory but also in Russian regions," he said.

Unlike the U.S., the Syrian government invited Russia to help in its fight against terrorism. The U.S. neither has a mandate from the United Nations to invade and occupy another country's sovereignty nor an invitation from Damascus.

The third reason for the American army's occupation of Syria is to support a Kurdish militia group in the northeastern areas with the aim of dividing the country and further prevent Syria's recovery from the decade-old war imposed on it.

In early 2019, former U.S. President Donald Trump, known for being outspoken in media interviews and saying things the American establishment would rather keep a lid on, told CBS that “one of the reasons I want to keep (referring here to the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq on the border with Syria) is because I want to be looking a little bit at Iran ...  I want to be able to watch Iran. All I want to do is be able to watch.”

His statement reaffirms America's interference and its role in causing insecurity in West Asia.

If the U.S. wanted to be "looking a little bit at Iran", it has scores of other bases in the region. It dispatches warships to the Persian Gulf for that reason.

While the level of mutual trust among neighbors in the West Asia region is increasing, the U.S. is doing everything it can to harm those relations to keep its hegemonic presence in the region to incite conflicts and pit one country against another while helping the U.S. military industrial complex, which American hawks have a strong connection with.

At the end of the day, it's all about financial profit for the United States at the expense of trouble in West Asia.

While the U.S. is building another base in Syria, discussions about withdrawing from Iraq and Syria now that Daesh has been defeated is not even being whispered about in the American Congress.

The U.S. looks like it is seeking to keep its occupation of both Iraq and Syria for an indefinite period.

The anti-American resistance movements in both countries have stated that at the end of the day, the U.S. military will be forced to leave.