President Donald Trump has elected to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train "moderate" Syrian rebels fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria according to U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Post. The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later. Preceding the CIA program was a Pentagon-led effort which was criticized by Foreign Policy for costing $500 million without yielding tangible results.