Will Obama Help the Syrian Revolution?

U.S. President Barack Obama is inclined to begin sending weapons to the Syrian rebels, according to The Washington Post.

This has been the case especially since unconfirmed reports that President Assad’s regime used chemical weapons appeared, which would be crossing the “red line” that the American president had warned about before. “What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don’t know how they were used, when they were used [or] who used them … When I am making decisions about America’s national security and the potential for taking additional action in response to … chemical weapon use, I have to make sure I have the facts,” Obama said at Tuesday’s White House press conference.

CIA Director David Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both of whom have already resigned, supported sending weapons to the rebels in the fall of last year. Obama decided to exercise caution and go against their advice: The U.S. is supporting the rebels by financing medical aid and military equipment but not weapons. That is, it’s providing bulletproof vests and night vision devices.

The Syrian rebels mostly need anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, but Obama is afraid that they could end up in the hands of radical Islamists, who are fighting the toughest battles with the regime, according to many reports. The anti-aircraft missiles could then be used, for example, against passenger airplanes taking off in Baghdad — Syrian and Iraqi radicals are on very good terms with each other.

Obama’s doubts are fueled also by the fact that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who are already providing the rebels with weapons, are arguing about which groups deserve them and which don’t. Nonetheless, General Salim Idris, an engineer educated in Germany who became a leader of the Free Syrian Army, has been gaining more and more trust among Americans recently.

The fact that Obama talked on the phone on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and is sending new Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow indicates that Obama is planning a change in U.S. policy toward Syria. Russians are opposed to the international community getting involved in the conflict, so the Assad regime has their de facto support.

Anything more than providing weapons is pretty much out of the question. American generals warn that the Syrian anti-aircraft defense is much stronger than that of Libya, where government forces were helpless in the face of NATO’s airplanes that helped the rebels there two years ago.