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RUSSELS (AP) — The U.S. will send armored reinforcements into eastern Syria to bolster defenses against a potential move by Islamic State militants on oil fields controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Friday.

Esper described the added force as “mechanized,” which would likely means it will include tanks and other combat vehicles such as Bradley armored infantry carriers. This would introduce a new dimension to the U.S. military presence , which largely has been comprised of special operations forces not equipped with tanks or other armored vehicles.

It also would partially reverse the ongoing shrinkage of the U.S. troop presence in Syria. President Donald Trump has ordered the withdrawal of nearly all 1,000 U.S. troops who had been partnering with a Syrian Kurdish-led militia against the Islamic State group. That withdrawal is proceeding even as Esper announced the plan to put reinforcements in the oil-producing area.

Although Esper did not mention the size of the U.S. reinforcements, it could total several hundred troops because fuel-guzzling tanks and other armored vehicles depend on a large supply and logistical support group.

Esper’s announcement came even as Trump again indicated in tweets that the U.S. military mission in Syria is completed. He previously has acknowledged a willingness to help protect the oil fields in eastern Syria, suggesting they could benefit the Kurds as well as the U.S., although those resources belong to the Syrian government.

“Oil is secured,” Trump tweeted Friday. “Our soldiers have left and are leaving Syria for other places, then…. COMING HOME! … When these pundit fools who have called the Middle East wrong for 20 years ask what we are getting out of the deal, I simply say, THE OIL, AND WE ARE BRINGING OUR SOLDIERS BACK HOME, ISIS SECURED!”

Asked about America’s shifting Syria strategy, Esper said the U.S. mission has always been to prevent the resurgence of IS. “That mission remains unchanged,” he said.

But Esper said at NATO that the U.S. is “considering how we might reposition forces in the area in order to ensure we secure the oil field.” He added: “We are reinforcing that position. It will include some mechanized forces.”

The defense secretary did not provide details on the makeup of the reinforcements. He made clear their main purpose is to prevent IS from regaining access to Syrian oil, which prior to 2017 was a major source of its revenue.

Starting in late 2015 and continuing for many months, the U.S. conducted airstrikes against a range of oil resources in the Deir el-Zour province that had been taken over by IS. The attacks damaged or knocked out oil tanker convoys, oil processing plants, storage facilities, pumping stations, pipelines and refineries. It was called Operation Tidal Wave II, after a World War II air campaign to hit Romania’s oil industry.

Esper said IS must not be allowed to again threaten the oil.

“If ISIS has access to the resources, and therefore the means to procure arms or to buy fighters or whatever else they do, then it means it makes it more difficult to defeat ISIS,” he said.

Esper’s comments at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels reflected one more change in what has been a rapidly shifting U.S. stance on American forces in Syria.

Just last week, Trump insisted that all American forces in Syria would come home. Then he said the 1,000 in the north would return home and that American troops in the south, numbering about 200 the Al-Tanf garrison in the south, would stay there.

Trump in the past days has turned a greater focus on the Syrian oil facilities in the eastern part of the country, saying U.S. will stay in Syria to protect them.

According to officials, top military leaders have pushed for the U.S. to leave forces in Syria to guard against an IS resurgence. While the group’s physical zone of control was largely destroyed by U.S. and Syrian Kurdish forces, insurgents remain in small pockets throughout the country and in Iraq.

Russian and Turkish leaders have now divided up security roles in northeast Syria following America’s abrupt troop withdrawal from the Turkey-Syrian border region. The American move triggered widespread criticism that the Trump administration had abandoned the Syrian Kurdish fighters who fought alongside the U.S. against IS for several years.

Trump spurred a fresh wave of condemnation when he tweeted Thursday that he had spoken with Syrian Kurdish military chief Mazloum Abdi and said that perhaps “it is time for Kurds to start heading to the Oil Region.” That was an apparent reference to the oil fields in Deir el-Zour. U.S. military commanders see that region as critical to holding off an IS resurgence there.

“We’ve secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of U.S. troops will remain in the area where they have the oil,” Trump said. “And we’re going to be protecting it, and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”

White House officials did not respond to requests for greater clarity about Trump’s tweet suggesting Kurds head to the oil region.

The Pentagon released a statement Thursday saying it was committed to sending additional military forces to eastern Syria to “reinforce” control of the oil fields and prevent them from “falling back to into the hands of ISIS or other destabilizing actors.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is confronting the limits of his main impeachment defense.

As the probe hits the one-month mark, Trump and his aides have largely ignored the details of the Ukraine allegations against him. Instead, they’re loudly objecting to the House Democrats’ investigation process, using that as justification for ordering administration officials not to cooperate and complaining about what they deem prejudicial, even unconstitutional, secrecy.

But as a near-daily drip of derogatory evidence emerges from closed-door testimony on Capitol Hill, the White House assertion that the proceedings are unfair is proving to be a less-than-compelling counter to the mounting threat to Trump’s presidency. Some senior officials have complied with congressional subpoenas to assist House Democratic investigators, defying White House orders.

Asked about criticism that the White House lacks a coordinated pushback effort and could do a better job delivering its message, spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said, “It’s hard to message anything that’s going on behind closed doors and in secret.”

“It’s like you’re fighting a ghost, you’re fighting against the air. So we’re doing the best we can,” she said on Fox News Channel.

It was a rare public admission from the White House that despite the Republican president’s bravado, real risks remain.

White House officials, who have been treating unified Republican support for Trump as a given, have grown increasingly fearful of GOP defections in a House impeachment vote and a potential Senate trial. While they do not believe there will be enough votes to remove the president, as Democrats hope, the West Wing believes more must be done to shore up Republican support to avoid embarrassment and genuine political peril.

Trump has been upset with his own top aides — including Grisham and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — for not sufficiently changing the story line. Instead he relies on his Twitter account and Q&A sessions with reporters to launch daily attacks on the probe. And while Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has added to the smoke screen, much as he did during the Russia probe, the former New York City mayor has dramatically scaled back his media appearances since several of his associates were arrested in connection with Ukraine.

Complaining privately and publicly that Democrats “stick together” better than the GOP, Trump has leaned on Republican congressional allies to do more, according to White House officials and Republicans close to the West Wing. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

At first, Trump was angry that his surrogates failed to defend him effectively. Those included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who stumbled through a “60 Minutes” interview. Trump urged the GOP earlier this week to fight back, a lesson that was taken to heart by a group of conservative Republicans, including members of the Freedom Caucus, who stormed a Capitol Hill hearing room on Wednesday to disrupt testimony in the probe.

Trump allies cheered that maneuver, believing it showed that Republicans throughout Washington were coming to grips with the severity of the situation.

But the GOP complaints still are largely about process and may have limited potency: Trump’s defenders are complaining that the interviews are being conducted in secret, which may soon change, and that Republicans are not involved, though GOP members can ask questions right alongside the Democrats.

The contradictions are telling.

On Thursday, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a top ally of Trump, introduced a resolution condemning the Democratic-controlled House for pursuing a “closed door, illegitimate impeachment inquiry.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a co-sponsor of that measure.

But Graham also said he’s talked to Mulvaney about what seems to be a lackluster White House pushback.

During President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, Graham said, “he had a team that was organized, had legal minds that could understand what was being said versus the legal proceedings in question. And they were on message every day.” Republicans have been complaining for weeks that the Trump White House has no such defense system in place — partly a result of the inability to identify qualified talent but also Trump’s own qualms about projecting concern in the face of the investigation.

“I think they’re working on getting a messaging team together,” Graham said.

Democrats reject Trump arguments that the House interview process is unfair, and White House officials privately acknowledge their legal objections may not win the day. But they believe it’s a political argument that will hold sway with the American people.

However, the White House strategy comes with an expiration date: In coming weeks, the closed-door testimony will give way to public hearings. Democrats are expected to call a narrow group of witnesses to testify that Trump encouraged Ukraine to conduct investigations that could benefit him politically in 2020 and to address whether those requests were tied to conditions for giving Ukraine military aid and a White House meeting.

Some Trump allies believe the White House can’t afford not to directly address what’s already been revealed. They note that as more Trump appointees offer disparaging information to Congress, and as it is corroborated by official sources, the president will have increasing difficulty simply complaining he is the target of a new “witch hunt.”

The president continues to insist he has done nothing wrong, a contention that can be difficult to square with the testimony coming on a nearly daily basis from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Tuesday’s testimony by the top U.S. envoy to Ukraine, William Taylor, only raised the stakes as he gave House impeachment investigators a detailed roadmap of Trump’s efforts to squeeze that country’s leaders for damaging information about his Democratic political rivals. Taylor, who read a lengthy opening statement, is expected to be a star witness at the Democrats’ planned public hearings.

Though the White House derided Taylor’s testimony as third-hand information, he vividly described, with the help of contemporaneous notes, his concerns about a parallel foreign policy apparatus run by Giuliani that involved American military aid being withheld unless Ukraine’s newly elected president announced an investigation into the Democrat Joe Biden and his son.

Wary of any erosion of GOP support, White House aides are stepping up their outreach to Republican lawmakers, through meetings, conference calls and informal retreats like the one hosted by Mulvaney last weekend at Camp David.

While the White House operation plays catch-up, Trump’s outside allies have also been bolstering their own anti-impeachment messaging.

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon launched a new daily radio show and podcast this week titled “War Room: Impeachment.”

And things are getting better in the White House and on Capitol Hill, said Trump 2016 campaign adviser Jason Miller, who is a co-host of the Bannon effort. “The uptick in energy and focus that we’ve seen from all parties this week, I think has been a welcome sign for Trump allies.”

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AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Alan Fram contributed to this report.