United States Resigned To Arming Syrian Rebels

The United States will perhaps provide military aid to Syrian rebels. Since the start of the conflict two years ago, Americans have always sought to postpone this eventuality.

The decision hasn’t been made yet, but Washington is seriously considering it. For the first time, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has come to recognize that the United States no longer rules out the possibility of supplying weapons to the Syrian opposition, which has sought for the last two years to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. However, Hagel did spill that he is aware that it is the “least bad solution,” as noted in The Wall Street Journal.

Barack Obama is under pressure from Congress and Israel not to remain passive while faced with the regime in Damascus, especially as United States intelligence services have become virtually certain that Assad has used a “small amount” of chemical weapons against his enemies. But on this sensitive issue, the Obama administration — educated by the Iraqi precedent — remains extremely cautious, claiming that additional evidence will be difficult to collect due to the minimum of cooperation from the Syrian regime, which denies access to U.N. investigators. Without “compelling evidence,” it is difficult to approve U.S. military intervention on Syrian soil. However, a surgical strike against a site hiding chemical weapons is not being ruled out.

Changing the Balance of Power

The United States is also not in favor of establishing a no-fly zone that would finally provide a sanctuary for rebels. The establishment of such an area requires prior neutralization of Syrian anti-aircraft defense systems. But again, Americans are not willing to engage in operations to destroy Syrian radar. That leaves the option of arming the rebels. The CIA and the Pentagon were already in favor last fall, but Obama put in his veto. Since then, non-Islamist insurgents have lost ground to jihadists that the United States has on its list of terrorist organizations. And to make matters worse, the Syrian army is no longer stagnating and is even recovering some positions in the Idleb region near Homs. It is therefore urgent to restore the balance of forces on the ground.

Until now, the CIA oversaw some arms shipments to the rebels, especially through Jordan. The United States is also providing nonlethal weapons to opponents of Assad. The next provision of American anti-aircraft missiles could be coordinated with Great Britain and France, who have been in favor of arming rebels for some months. But in Washington as in Paris, there are voices rising to warn against such a decision.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recently showed skepticism before Congress about supplying weapons to the Syrian opposition. For U.S. experts, there is no guarantee that such weapons will not end up in the hands of radical Islamists who vow to continue the fight for the fall of Assad in order to establish a caliphate in Syria.