A former American ambassador to Syria says the Syrian government and its allies, including Iran, will ultimately frustrate attempts by the United States to influence Syrian matters and will drive the U.S. out of the Arab country.
"There is a mechanism that is now suspended after the USA shot down [Syrian] aircraft".
"They were threatening our forces on the ground", the U.S. official quoted by AFP said.
Syrian government forces and their allies on Wednesday seized an area southeast of Damascus towards the Jordanian and Iraqi borders, an area where USA troops are based, state television reported.
The announcement from Canberra came as a brief, two-day truce collapsed in the southern Syrian city of Daraa and nearby areas where government forces have gained ground.
That incident prompted the Russian ministry of defense to announce that it would suspend the de-confliction hotline with the coalition which is created to prevent any accidents in the skies over Syria.
In another development, the U.S. military announced officially that coalition forces had killed the top cleric of so-called Islamic State (IS), Turki al-Binali, in an air strike in Syria last month.
The US military says it has shot down an armed, Iran-made drone that had been bearing down on its forces near a garrison in Syria's southeast.
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The U.S. has maintained its broadening military involvement in Syria is part of the global fight against ISIS, and has avoided engaging directly with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and the larger civil war playing out in Syria.
A defense official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the drone shot down Tuesday was a Shaheed 129 and appeared to have been operated by "pro-regime" forces.
With the skies over Syria growing increasingly crowded, a statement from the Australian Defense Department released in the capital, Canberra, said that "Australian Defense Force protection is regularly reviewed in response to a range of potential threats".
All of the strikes, the Pentagon has said, were in self-defense and legal under the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
When a US Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet shot downa Russian-made Syrian SU-22 warplane after it reportedly attacked US-supported fighters near the embattled city of Raqqa, it did not take long for Moscow to respond to what it viewed as an "aggression" against Syrian government forces, which the Kremlin backs.
More than 320,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict began with anti-government demonstrations in March 2011.
The United States does not find actions of the Russian military in Syria concerning.
The development comes as tensions rise in Syria with Russian Federation and Iran sending USA warnings.
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