U.S. to arm Syria rebels, set no-fly zone near Jordan

Hot on the heels of U.S. President Barack Obama’s push into Syria, Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is said to have cut short his private visit to Morocco to return to the kingdom overnight.

The monarch and his entourage have already left Morocco, according to Naharnet news portal.

The news follows reports of the Saudi military command ordering an “above normal defense readiness” at the kingdom’s largest air force base in Tabouk, close to the Jordan-Saudi border.

Observers associate the developments to the Syria war.

Two senior Western diplomats in Turkey told Reuters today the United States is studying setting up a limited no-fly zone in Syria close to the southern border with Jordan.

Their comments, confirmed by a third regional diplomat, came after the White House said overnight it would step up military assistance to rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad in response to proof of chemical weapons use by Assad forces.

"Washington is considering a no-fly zone to help Assad's opponents," one diplomat told Reuters. He said it would be limited "time-wise and area-wise, possibly near the Jordanian border," without giving details.

U.S. military planners, responding to a request by the White House to develop options for Syria, recommended the limited no-fly zone along the Syrian border to protect rebels and refugees inside Jordan.

The plan, according to the Wall Street Journal, would create what one official called a "no fighting zone" that would stretch up to 25 miles into Syrian territory along the Jordanian border, preventing Assad forces from launching attacks against the rebels and refugees and protecting U.S. personnel involved in distributing weapons and providing training.

Under this plan, the U.S. and its allies would enforce the zone using aircraft flown from Jordanian bases and flying inside the kingdom, according to U.S. officials.

Jordan has been inundated by a flood of refugees Jordanian and U.S. officials say is a growing threat to the kingdom, a key U.S. ally in the region.

The U.S. has already moved Patriot air defense batteries and F-16 fighter planes to Jordan, which could be integral to any no-fly zone if President Obama approves the military proposal.

Proponents of the proposal think a no-fly zone could be imposed without a UN Security Council resolution, since the U.S. would not regularly enter Syrian airspace and wouldn't hold Syrian territory.

U.S. warplanes have air-to-air missiles that could destroy Syrian planes from long ranges.

The U.S. is to supply direct military aid to the Syrian opposition for the first time, the White House announced overnight.

Ben Rhodes, spokesman for President Obama, did not give details about the military aid other than to say it would be "different in scope and scale to what we have provided before".

He said, "I can't go through an inventory of the type of assistance we are providing but suffice to say it's going to be substantively different from what we were providing."

The U.S. had warned any use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line.”

The BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut says the White House announcement is one the Syrian opposition has been pushing and praying for for months.

The Syrian opposition’s clamoring for U.S. arms peaked after thousands of guerillas from Iran’s Lebanese Hezbollah movement crossed into Syria last month to fight alongside Assad’s troops.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed Washington’s “clear” statement.

"Urgent that Syria regime should let UN investigate all reports of chemical weapons use," he said on his official Twitter feed.

Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Obama, said the U.S. intelligence community believed the "Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times over the last year".

He said intelligence officials had a "high confidence" in their assessment, and also estimated that 100 to 150 people had died from chemical weapons attacks, "however, casualty data is likely incomplete".

"We have consistently said the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses red lines that have existed in the international community for decades," Rhodes said.

He highlighted four instances in which the U.S. believes chemical weapons were used: on March 19 in the Aleppo suburb of Khan Al-Asal; April 13 in the Aleppo neighborhood of Sheikh Maksoud; May 14, in Qasr Abu Samra, which is north of Homs; and on May 23 in an attack in eastern Damascus.

Rhodes said President Obama had made the decision to increase assistance, including "military support", to the Supreme Military Council (SMC) and Syrian Opposition Coalition.

He did not give details of the aid, but U.S. media quoted administration officials as saying it will most likely include sending small arms and ammunition.

The New York Times quoted U.S. officials as saying Washington could provide anti-tank weapons.

Syria's rebels have been calling for both anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry.

The Wall Street Journal said Washington is also considering a no-fly zone inside Syria, possibly near the border with Jordan, which would protect refugees and rebels who are training there.

When asked whether Obama would back a no-fly zone over Syria, Rhodes said one would not make a "huge difference" on the ground -- but would be costly.

He said further actions would be taken "on our own timeline."

The CIA is expected to co-ordinate delivery of the military equipment and to train the rebel soldiers on how to use it.

Until now, the U.S. has limited its help to rebel forces by providing food rations and medical supplies.

Rhodes said the White House hoped the increased support would bolster the effectiveness and legitimacy of both the political and military arms of Syria's rebels, and said the U.S. was "comfortable" working with SMC chief Gen. Salim Idriss.

"It's been important to work through them while aiming to isolate some of the more extremist elements of the opposition, such as (Jabhat) al-Nusra," he said.

A senior pro-Kremlin politician in Russia -- the Damascus government’s chief ally and arms supplier -- said U.S. claims of the Assad government's use of chemical weapons were "fabricated.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin's senior foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said information provided by the United States to Russia over suspected use of chemical weapons by President Assad's forces "does not look convincing.”

Obama and Putin will hold a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of the summit of eight leading industrial nations early next week in Northern Ireland.

The White House announcement immediately shook up the ongoing debate in Washington DC over how the U.S. might provide assistance to the rebels.

Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have been particularly strident in their calls for military aid, said the finding must change US policy in Syria. They called for further action, saying US credibility was on the line.

"A decision to provide lethal assistance, especially ammunition and heavy weapons, to opposition forces in Syria is long overdue, and we hope the president will take this urgently needed step," they said in a joint statement.

"But providing arms alone is not sufficient. The president must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad's ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air."

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was also pleased with the decision and had a call for further action.

"It is long past time to bring the Assad regime's bloodshed in Syria to an end," said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck. "As President Obama examines his options, it is our hope he will properly consult with Congress before taking any action."

And House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., released a statement saying, "I am pleased that President Obama's Administration has joined the growing international chorus declaring that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in Syria, crossing the red line drawn by the president last August."

But Rogers doesn’t want the assistance to stop there: “As I called for in a USA Today op-ed earlier this week," Rogers said, "the United States should assist the Turks and our Arab League partners to create safe zones in Syria from which the U.S. and our allies can train, arm, and equip vetted opposition forces."

Iran is in “Mother of All Battles” over Syria

Putin with Maliki yesterday (top right) and with Khamenei in 2007

Emboldened by his one-on-one talks yesterday with Russian President Vladimir Putin at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Iran’s emerging surrogate Nouri al-Maliki told Turkey to end her “presumptuous” verve and keep her hands off Syria.

The Iraqi prime minister’s blatant support of the Syrian regime came soon after he revived military ties with Moscow (see previous post).

Maliki said Syria was not threatening Turkey, and Ankara should not seek NATO’s intervention.

“Turkey is being presumptuous, you could say, as if it were taking responsibility for solving the Syrian conflict instead of the Syrian people and wants to impose its own solution. For this reason, the international community needs to stop Turkey from intervening,” he told the press in moscow.

NATO must not use protecting Turkey as a pretext to intervene in Syria, he said.

Maliki said Iraq's position on Syria is similar to Russia’s as both countries are calling for peaceful resolution of the conflict.

He also dismissed charges that Iraq allowed Iran to deliver weapons to Syria through its airspace.

“This is not true,” he told Interfax yesterday, suggesting the claims are politically motivated.

“We have been doing random checks of aircrafts and have not discovered any weapon aboard. We found no evidence of Iranian planes ferrying weapons to Syria. We clearly told Syria and Iran that we allow delivery of diverse cargo, but not weapons,” he said.

Putin meanwhile postponed a scheduled visit to Ankara because of his “busy schedule” this month, the Kremlin press office told RT (Russia Today).

The Russian president’s decision to postpone the visit comes amid mounting tension between Turkey and Syria.

Editorially, a Syria and Iran watcher, who is a confidant of the two countries’ decision-makers, says Tehran considers the battle for Syria the “Mother of All Battles.”

Grounds for Iran’s mindset, the man tells pan-Arab al-Hayat’s editor-in-chief Ghassan Charbel on condition of anonymity, are as follows:

*** Contemplate the region in the few years preceding the Arab Spring. Iran was in the driving seat. Its clout in Iraq was waiting in the wings for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Its relations with Syria were solid and titling in its favor. Its leadership was in the saddle of the Axis of Resistance, which stretched from Tehran to Syria, to Lebanon, and to Palestine via Jihad and Hamas.

*** Between 2000 and 2010, Iran scored spectacular successes: the 2006 Lebanon War, the debut of Iranian missiles in Israel’s security equation, and the Gaza War that consolidated Iranian presence on the Palestinian scene with Sunnite and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Hamas.

*** Iran became the Number One player in Lebanon after the 2005 withdrawal of Syrian troops in the wake of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination. From thereon, Hezbollah became the conduit for Syrian presence in Lebanon.

*** Via Hamas and Jihad, Iran was able to abort Palestinian-Israeli negotiations under both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

*** With the U.S. pulling out of Iraq and Maliki remaining at the helm there, the Axis of Evil came to include Baghdad, which fully espoused Iran’s Syria policy.

*** The Arab Spring startled Iran. Hosni Mubarak’s flaccid regime was an easier pro-American target for the Axis of Resistance. Mohamed Morsi’s election as president of Egypt at the peak of the struggle for Syria dealt Iran a body blow. Morsi has been unequivocal in wanting President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

*** Iran is now running into a regional brick wall. You can call it a Sunnite brick wall, given Morsi’s alliance with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the pair’s cooperation with Gulf Arabs, especially on the Syria file. This reality has shuffled the rules of play in the region.

*** The Axis of Resistance has lost its sole Sunnite offshoot, Hamas, which has moved out of Syria.

*** Iran is waging a “Mother of All Battles” in Syria in that it is defending there its role, its borders, its investments over the years, a crossroads, a corridor to Hezbollah, and its gains in Iraq and Lebanon.

*** Hezbollah is in a life-and-death battle in Syria. The “Party of God” is aware it needs the Syria corridor to remain a regional player and retain the ability to wage war or face one. Otherwise, it would metamorphose into a local player in Lebanese politics.

*** Iran recognizes the Syrian regime’s fall and the rise of a substitute pro-Turkey regime could create new facts on the ground in Iraq and Lebanon. That would bring down the curtains on Iran’s role as a major player and undermine the image of its leaders as they struggle with U.S. and European sanctions and regional commitments.

*** It is difficult to imagine the Syrian regime returning to a status quo ante the Arab Spring. Iran is mindful of this, but chooses to extend the regime’s lifespan despite the costs. Such policy could turn Syria into an Arab Afghanistan worrisome to Turkey, Israel and other states.

*** Iran is waging a “Mother of All Battles” in Syria because it cannot bear losing two battles: the role battle and the battle for the bomb. 

Was Turkish jet lost in NATO spooks act?

As Western and Turkish military leaders prepare for a pipe ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels later today over the downing of a Turkish fighter jet by Syria, a Russian report blames the incident on a failed NATO spooks operation.

RT, the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel that carries the Russian view on global news, writes this morning:

“The Turkish military jet’s incursion into Syria may have been a botched NATO operation on counterfeiting Syrian military aircraft ID in order to fool the country’s air defense. The necessary codes could have been ‘borrowed’ from the Syrian fighter that had been stolen by its defector pilot.

“This theory, explaining why the Turkish reconnaissance plane entered Syrian airspace before being taken down, was voiced by Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, which cited unnamed sources in the Syrian security forces.

“Syrians believe the Friday incident has its roots in last week’s defection of a Syrian pilot who escaped in his MiG-21 fighter jet to Jordan. Damascus branded the defector a traitor, while Jordanian authorities gave him asylum.

“The defection brings memories of a similar incident that took place in February 2011, when two Libyan pilots ‘delivered’ their military aircraft to Malta. NATO’s bombing campaign, which ended with the fall of the Muammar Gaddafi’s government, started just a month later.

“Military analysts note that, curiously, the Libyan air defense systems appeared to be helpless against NATO’s airstrikes. The explanation may lie in the friend-or-foe systems that the two stolen aircraft had onboard, the newspaper suggests. This system is used by the military in combat to distinguish their own aircraft.

“According to the newspaper, the Syrian military believe that NATO took a similar approach again, but failed to properly decipher the codes. This is evident by the fact that the defector pilot managed to send his family to Turkey before stealing the fighter jet, which means the act was probably not done out of a sudden emotional breakdown.

“NATO may have tasked Turkey to test how well the job was performed, and the result was disastrous, the report explains.

“This is only a theory and more trivial explanations cannot be ruled out – but the intrusion is more likely to have been part of a military operation rather than the mistake Turkey claims it to be, military experts say.”

Expect “a lot of bark but little bite” from Turkey

Turkey today called a meeting of NATO member states to discuss its response to the shooting down of one of its fighter jets by Syria on Friday.

Djemal Pasha (from Wikipedia)

Ankara invoked Article 4 of NATO's charter, under which consultations can be requested when an ally feels their security is threatened. But the move also signals that, for now, Ankara is looking for a concerted diplomatic response rather than taking military action of its own.

Earlier, Turkey's foreign minister said the F-4 Phantom was in international airspace when it was hit.

Ahmet Davutoglu said the unarmed plane was not on a reconnaissance or secret mission related to Syria, but had mistakenly breezed in and out of Syrian airspace a quarter of an hour before the incident.

In an interview with TRT television, Davutoglu stressed the unarmed jet had briefly entered Syrian airspace by mistake on Friday but had left by the time it was shot down several minutes later.

“Our plane shortly violated Syrian airspace, but not at the time it was shot down,” he said.

"According to our conclusions, our plane was shot down in international airspace, 13 nautical miles (24km) from Syria," he said.

Davutoglu also insisted the jet had not been on a "covert mission related to Syria" but had instead been carrying out a training flight to test Turkey's radar capabilities.

The unarmed F-4 Phantom was not sending hostile signals, and identifiable as Turkish, he said.

"You have to first send a caution, a warning," he said in the first detailed Turkish statement on the international incident. "If the warning doesn't work, you scramble your planes, you send a stronger signal, you force the plane to land. There wasn't enough time to do any of that in the time our plane was in Syrian airspace."

"We have to question how it is that an unarmed, solo flight got this response from the Syrians," he said.

He also said Turkish intelligence intercepted radio communications from the Syrian side suggesting that they knew it was a Turkish plane.

Davutoglu said Turkey's response will be clear after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's scheduled meeting with opposition leaders later today. “We will, without any hesitation, decisively take the necessary steps regarding the Turkish plane downed by Syria,” he added.

This is an unusual move that raised speculation about a possible parliamentary decision, which is a requirement for any military action out of the country according to the Turkish Constitution. “We are not considering military action now,” a source told Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News. “But we want to inform the opposition and we want to keep all options open.”

In his daily column for Saudi Asharq Alawsat, Egyptian political analyst and talk show host Imad Adeeb quotes an unnamed Turkey expert as giving four reasons why Ankara’s response to Friday’s plane incident will be all bark but no bite.

The four reasons are:

(1) Relations between the Turkish military and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) of President Abdullah Gul and Erdogan are stretched and the military are opposed to any impetuous escalation.

(2) Military escalation against Syria would help the regime’s political floatation. Fact is that an external military threat usually shores up a regime swimming in troubled waters by rallying citizens around it.

(3) A Turkish military blitz would destroy Turkey’s so-called “zero problem” foreign policy and evoke memories of the Ottoman Empire and of Djemal Pasha, who was appointed with full powers in military and civilian affairs in Syria in 1915.

(4) The regional reactions of Iran and Hezbollah and trade relations with Russia and China give Ankara cause for concern.

Accordingly, “You can expect Ankara to talk tough politically and take retaliatory political measures. But it will choose to pass up a military riposte as it did in the case of the Israeli naval commando raid” on a Turkish boat in the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

“Turkey will be making a lost of noise, but the maximum it will do is increase its military assistance to the Syrian opposition.”

Syria fires four messages by downing Turkish jet

Photo from the Turkish daily Hurriyet

“Suspense” is the predominant impression you get from reading regional news and views the morning after Syria shot down a Turkish F-4 Phantom jet over its airspace.

The buzzword is “suspense” because political analysts and opinion-shapers are hazarding conflicting guesses on the likely response of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad poked him in the eye with a blunt stick.

A Syrian military spokesman said an unidentified aerial object violated the country’s airspace and was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery, hitting it one kilometer off the country’s Mediterranean coastline, Syria’s state-run news agency SANA reported.

The plane turned out to be a Turkish fighter jet, and was dealt with in keeping with Syrian law, a Syrian military spokesman explained.

He also stated that Syrian forces are helping the Turks search for the two missing Turkish pilots.

Erdogan issued a statement, after an emergency security meeting in Ankara, saying a decisive response will be taken once all the facts about the incident are known.

Abdelbari Atwan, publisher and editor-in-chief of the London-based pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi, believes Erdogan’s talk of a “decisive response” after the emergency security meeting in Ankara “implies that the matter is extremely serious and warrants some kind of retaliation (by Turkey)… We could be on the brink of a regional war.”

By downing the jet, says Atwan, “the Syrian leadership meant to send four strong messages”:

• The first message “warns Turkey not to overreach itself in its support of the Syrian opposition by supplying it with advanced weapons and by providing safe passage to Muslim extremists seeking to bring down the Syrian regime.”
• The second tells NATO “and the United States in particular that Syria is not Libya and that any recourse to the use of force against it -- including aerial ‘carpet bombing’ -- won’t be consequence-free.”
• The third message is addressed to “some Arab countries, chiefly in the Gulf, that are arming the opposition via Turkey.”
• The fourth and last is for the public at home and is meant “to make up for the defection of a Syrian pilot with his MIG-21 to Jordan and show that cohesion of the regime is inviolate and ready to foil the ‘external plot’ to bring it down.”

To Atwan’s mind, the Syrian leadership could not have gone this far in the escalation “without getting a green light from its Russian counterpart.” He says the fighter jet went down near the Russian naval base in Tartus, “and might have been brought down by Russian air defense systems there.”  

Accordingly, “will the Syrian leadership succeed in dragging Turkey, and thus the United States, into a mistimed pre-emptive war they want to avoid at all costs pending the U.S. presidential elections and preparations for taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities?”

“It is noteworthy,” Atwan writes, “that Turkey’s response to the downing of its fighter jet was muddled, much as its reaction to stepped up Syrian support for Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)” terrorist attacks on Turkish targets. 

What is certain is that “Syria is not Libya and Assad is not Gaddafi. The former has an impressive arsenal comprising S-300 (Russian surface-to-air) missiles while the latter could not intercept s single Western plane except the one over Lockerbie -- that’s if he were the one who brought it down after all.” 

1998 Adana Accord as Turkey’s gateway to Syria

Bereaved mother of Ali Shaaban (al-akhbar.com/Haytham Musawi)

Syria-watchers have their eyes trained on Turkey now that Kofi Annan’s mission is twitching in its final death throes.

And Turkish political analyst Abdullah Bozkurt expects Ankara to eventually invoke the 1998 Adana Agreement to justify a military intervention in Syria.

This is after Damascus spurned Annan’s April 10 ceasefire deadline by escalating, instead of abating, its violent crackdown on restive population centers and by firing across its borders overnight, killing TV cameraman Ali Shaaban in Lebanon and wounding Syrian refugees in Turkey.

It was the first time Syrian fire from across the border had hurt people on Turkish soil.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government would take its own “steps” against Syria if it failed to abide by the April 10 deadline, including measures “we don't want to think about.”

Erdogan's office said the prime minister would pay an official visit to Saudi Arabia later this week to confer on Syria with King Abdullah.

“Turkey... supports illegal Syrian militant groups, supplies them with weapons... and lets them illegally cross into Syria,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said at a press conference with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow. “How can we (fulfill the plan) if there are still illegal arm deliveries and moving of militants from Turkey?”

Muallem said Turkey, in violation of the Annan plan, harbors armed gangs who attack Syrian troops and allows them to smuggle weapons across border, calling its northern neighbor a “part of the problem.”

Turkey has taken in some 4,000 Syrians since last Thursday, pushing up the number of refugees on its soil to over 25,000.

U.S. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, who met with Turkish President Abdullah Gul Monday in Istanbul, might visit the Syrian refugee camps and monitor the situation on the Turkish-Syrian border

Several scenarios are being floated by the Turkish press, including the setting up of a buffer zone along the 900-kilometer border to protect the large numbers of refugees.

Turkish analyst Abdullah Bozkurt, of Today’s Zaman, believes Ankara is inching toward military intervention in Syria.

Bozkurt says Ankara has been preparing for “the inevitability of sending troops into Syria to establish a humanitarian corridor. The corridor would be used to reach cities and towns under siege and possibly create a safe buffer zone for internally displaced persons (IDPs).” The Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) said last week it was getting ready to deliver humanitarian aid to Syria should Turkey or the international community call for a “humanitarian aid corridor” to be carved inside Syrian territory.

In the event Russia and China continue to block UN-mandated action against Syria, Bozkurt writes, “Ankara will probably invoke the 1998 Adana Agreement with Syria to justify the military intervention” and invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which says that an attack on any member shall be considered to be an attack on all. “Since the Assad regime allows the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its affiliates to launch attacks on Turkish soil and harbors some 1,500 to 2,000 hardcore PKK militants in areas close to the Turkish border, Turkey can very well utilize the NATO security cover for assistance.”

Bozkurt recalls that the governments of Turkey and Syria signed the Adana Agreement on October 20, 1998. In it, Damascus not only agreed to recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization but also pledged to cease all aid to the PKK and to deport its leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The Adana Agreement was complemented by the security agreements of 10 September 2001, 23 December 2009 and 21 December 2010. Bozkurt says the latter, ratified by the Turkish parliament on 6 April 2011, “gives both parties the right to conduct joint operations in each other's territory. If Turkey officially recognized the Syrian National Council (SNC) as sole legitimate representative of Syria, which is likely to happen in the upcoming Paris meeting of the Friends of Syria if Assad failed to follow through on the Annan plan, it could very well secure SNC consent to launch joint operations with the Free Syrian Army against Assad forces.”

Bozkurt says Ankara “clearly prefers the multilateral approach for the time being. But when push comes to shove, Turkey will not hesitate to act alone, as it did in 1998 in Syria or in 1975 in Cyprus. Watch out for the signal that will indicate that Turkey is ready to act: When the government decides to seek a mandate from the Turkish Parliament for troop deployment in a foreign country, as it must according to the Constitution, it would mean the real warning shot for military incursion into Syria has already been fired.”

McCain: The case for U.S. airstrikes in Syria

Sen. John McCain (photo from queerty.com)

REMARKS BY SENATOR JOHN McCAIN ON THE SITUATION IN SYRIA ON THE FLOOR OF THE U.S. SENATE (March 5, 2012)

“After a year of bloodshed, the crisis in Syria has reached a decisive moment.

“It is estimated that more than 7,500 lives have been lost. The United Nations has declared that Syrian security forces are guilty of crimes against humanity, including the indiscriminate shelling of civilians, the execution of defectors, and the widespread torture of prisoners. Bashar Al-Assad is now doing to Homs what his father did to Hama. Aerial photographs procured by Human Rights Watch show a city that has been laid to waste by Assad’s tanks and artillery. A British photographer who was wounded and evacuated from the city described it as ‘a medieval siege and slaughter.’ The kinds of mass atrocities that NATO intervened in Libya to prevent in Benghazi are now a reality in Homs. Indeed, Syria today is the scene of some of the worst state-sponsored violence since Milosevic’s war crimes in the Balkans, or Russia’s annihilation of the Chechen city of Grozny.

“What is all the more astonishing is that Assad’s killing spree has continued despite severe and escalating international pressure against him. His regime is almost completely isolated. It has been expelled from the Arab League, rebuked by the United Nations General Assembly, excoriated by the U.N. Human Rights Council, and abandoned by nearly every country that once maintained diplomatic relations with it. At the same time, Assad’s regime is facing a punishing array of economic sanctions by the United States, the European Union, the Arab League, and others – measures that have targeted the assets of Assad and his henchmen, cut off the Central Bank and other financial institutions, grounded Syria’s cargo flights, and restricted the regime’s ability to sell oil. This has been an impressive international effort, and the Administration deserves a lot of credit for helping to orchestrate it.

“The problem is, the bloodletting continues. Despite a year’s worth of diplomacy backed by sanctions, Assad and his top lieutenants show no signs of giving up and taking the path into foreign exile. To the contrary, they appear to accelerating their fight to the finish. And they are doing so with the shameless support of foreign governments, especially in Russia, China, and Iran. A steady supply of weapons, ammunition, and other assistance is flowing to Assad from Moscow and Tehran, and as the Washington Post reported yesterday, Iranian military and intelligence operatives are likely active in Syria, helping to direct and sharpen the regime’s brutality. The Security Council is totally shut down as an avenue for increased pressure, and the recently convened Friends of Syria contact group, while a good step in principle, produced mostly rhetoric but precious little action when it met last month in Tunisia. Unfortunately, with each passing day, the international response to Assad’s atrocities is being overtaken by events on the ground in Syria.

“Some countries are finally beginning to acknowledge this reality, as well as its implications. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are calling for arming opposition forces in Syria. The newly-elected Kuwaiti parliament has called on their government to do the same. Last week, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that providing arms to opposition forces in Syria could help them shift the balance of power against Assad. Most importantly, Syrians themselves are increasingly calling for international military involvement. The opposition Syrian National Council recently announced that it is establishing a military bureau to channel weapons and other assistance to the Free Syrian Army and armed groups inside the country. Other members of the Council are demanding a more robust intervention.

“To be sure, there are legitimate questions about the efficacy of military options in Syria, and equally legitimate concerns about their risks and uncertainties. It is understandable that the Administration is reluctant to move beyond diplomacy and sanctions. Unfortunately, this policy is increasingly disconnected from the dire conditions on the ground in Syria, which has become a full-blown state of armed conflict. In the face of this new reality, the Administration’s approach to Syria is starting to look more like a hope than a strategy. So, too, does their continued insistence that Assad’s fall is ‘inevitable.’ Tell that to the people of Homs. Tell that to the people of Idlib, or Hama, or the other cities that Assad’s forces are now moving against. Nothing in this world is pre-determined. And claims about the inevitability of events can often be a convenient way to abdicate responsibility.

“But even if we do assume that Assad will ultimately fall, that may still take a really long time. In recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, said that if the status quo persists, Assad could hang on for months, possibly longer. And that was before Homs fell. So just to be clear: Even under the best-case scenario for the current policy, the cost of success will likely be months of continued bloodshed and thousands of additional lives lost. Is this morally acceptable to us? I believe it should not be.

“In addition to the moral and humanitarian interests at stake in Syria, what is just as compelling, if not more so, are the strategic and geopolitical interests. Put simply, the United States has a clear national security interest in stopping the violence in Syria and forcing Assad to leave power. In this way, Syria is very different than Libya: The stakes are far higher, both for America and some of our closest allies.

“This regime in Syria serves as the main forward operating base of the Iranian regime in the heart of the Arab world. It has supported Palestinian terrorist groups and funneled arms of all kinds, including tens of thousands of rockets, to Hezbollah in Lebanon. It remains a committed enemy of Israel. It has large stockpiles of chemical weapons and materials and has sought to develop a nuclear weapons capability. It was the primary gateway for the countless foreign fighters who infiltrated into Iraq and killed our troops. Assad and his lieutenants have the blood of hundreds of Americans on their hands. Many in Washington fear that what comes after Assad might be worse. How could it be any worse than this?

“The end of the Assad regime would sever Hezbollah’s lifeline to Iran, eliminate a long-standing threat to Israel, bolster Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence, and inflict a strategic defeat on the Iranian regime. It would be a geopolitical success of the first order. More than all of the compelling moral and humanitarian reasons, this is why Assad cannot be allowed to succeed and remain in power: We have a clear national security interest in his defeat. And that alone should incline us to tolerate a large degree of risk in order to see that this goal is achieved.

“Increasingly, the question for U.S. policy is not whether foreign forces will intervene militarily in Syria. We can be confident that Syria’s neighbors will do so eventually, if they have not already. Some kind of intervention will happen, with us or without us. So the real question for U.S. policy is whether we will participate in this next phase of the conflict in Syria, and thereby increase our ability to shape an outcome that is beneficial to the Syrian people, and to us. I believe we must.

“The President has characterized the prevention of mass atrocities as, quote, ‘a core national security interest.’ He has made it the objective of the United States that the killing in Syria must stop, and that Assad must go. He has committed the prestige and credibility of our nation to that goal, and it is the right goal. However, it is not clear that the present policy can succeed. If Assad manages to cling to power – or even if he manages to sustain his slaughter for months to come, with all of the human and geopolitical costs that entails – it would be a strategic and moral defeat for the United States. We cannot, we must not, allow this to happen.

“For this reason, the time has come for a new policy. As we continue to isolate Assad diplomatically and economically, we should work with our closest friends and allies to support opposition groups inside Syria, both political and military, to help them organize themselves into a more cohesive and effective force that can put an end to the bloodshed and force Assad and his loyalists to leave power. Rather than closing off the prospects for some kind of a negotiated transition that is acceptable to the Syrian opposition, foreign military intervention is now the necessary factor to reinforce this option. Assad needs to know that he will not win.

“What opposition groups in Syria need most urgently is relief from Assad’s tank and artillery sieges in the many cities that are still contested. Homs is lost for now, but Idlib, and Hama, and Qusayr, and Deraa, and other cities in Syria could still be saved. But time is running out. Assad’s forces are on the march. Providing military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is necessary, but at this late hour, that alone will not be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic way to do so is with foreign airpower.

“Therefore, at the request of the Syrian National Council, the Free Syrian Army, and Local Coordinating Committees inside the country, the United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces. To be clear: This will require the United States to suppress enemy air defenses in at least part of the country.

“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organize and plan their political and military activities against Assad. These safe havens could serve as platforms for the delivery of humanitarian and military assistance – including weapons and ammunition, body armor and other personal protective equipment, tactical intelligence, secure communications equipment, food and water, and medical supplies. These safe havens could also help the Free Syrian Army and other armed groups in Syria to train and organize themselves into more cohesive and effective military forces, likely with the assistance of foreign partners.

“The benefit for the United States in helping to lead this effort directly is that it would allow us to better empower those Syrian groups that share our interests – those groups that reject Al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime, and commit to the goal of an inclusive democratic transition, as called for by the Syrian National Council. If we stand on the sidelines, others will try to pick winners, and this will not always be to our liking or in our interest. This does that mean the United States should go it alone. We should not. We should seek the active involvement of key Arab partners such as Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Jordan, and Qatar – and willing allies in the E.U. and NATO, the most important of which in this case is Turkey.

“There will be no U.N. Security Council mandate for such an operation. Russia and China took that option off the table long ago. But let’s not forget: NATO took military action to save Kosovo in 1999 without formal U.N. authorization. There is no reason why the Arab League, or NATO, or a leading coalition within the Friends of Syria contact group, or all of them speaking in unison, could not provide a similar international mandate for military measures to save Syria today.

“Could such a mandate be gotten? I believe it could be. Foreign capitals across the world are looking to the United States to lead, especially now that the situation in Syria has become an armed conflict. But what they see is an Administration still hedging its bets – on the one hand, insisting that Assad’s fall is inevitable, but on the other, unwilling even to threaten more assertive actions that could make it so.

“The rhetoric out of NATO has been much more self-defeating. Far from making it clear to Assad that all options are on the table, key alliance leaders are going out of their way to publicly take options off the table. Last week, the Secretary-General of NATO, Mr. Rasmussen, said that the alliance has not even discussed the possibility of NATO action in Syria – saying, quote, ‘I don’t envision such a role for the alliance.’ The following day, the Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral James Stavridis, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that NATO has done no contingency planning – none – for potential military operations in Syria.

“That is not how NATO approached Bosnia. Or Kosovo. Or Libya. Is it now the policy of NATO – or the United States, for that matter – to tell the perpetrators of mass atrocities, in Syria or elsewhere, that they can go on killing innocent civilians by the hundreds or thousands, and the greatest alliance in history will not even bother to conduct any planning about how we might stop them? Is that NATO’s policy now? Is that our policy? Because that is the practical effect of this kind of rhetoric. It gives Assad and his foreign allies a green light for greater brutality.

“Not surprisingly, many countries, especially Syria’s neighbors, are also hedging their bets on the outcome in Syria. They think Assad will go, but they are not yet prepared to put all of their chips on that bet – even less so now that Assad’s forces have broken Homs and seem to be gaining momentum. There is only one nation that can alter this dynamic, and that is us. The President must state unequivocally that under no circumstances will Assad be allowed to finish what he has started, that there is no future in which Assad and his lieutenants will remain in control of Syria, and that the United States is prepared to use the full weight of our airpower to make it so. It is only when we have clearly and completely committed ourselves that we can expect other countries to do the same. Only then would we see what is really possible in winning international support to stop the killing in Syria.

“Are there dangers, and risks, and uncertainties in this approach? Absolutely. There are no ideal options in Syria. All of them contain significant risk. Many people will be quick to raise concerns about the course of action I am proposing. Many of these concerns have merit, but none so much that they should keep us from acting.

“For example, we continue to hear it said that we should not assist the opposition in Syria militarily because we don’t know who these people are. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated this argument just last week, adding that we could end up helping Al-Qaeda or Hamas. It is possible the Administration does not know much about the armed opposition in Syria, but how much effort have they really made to find out – to meet and engage these people directly? Not much, it appears.

“Instead, much of the best information we have about the armed resistance in Syria is thanks to courageous journalists, some of whom have given their lives to tell the story of the Syrian people. One of those journalists is a reporter working for Al-Jazeera named Nir Rosen, who spent months in the country, including much time with the armed opposition. Here is how he describes them in a recent interview:  

“‘The regime and its supporters describe the opposition, especially the armed opposition, as Salafis, Jihadists, Muslim Brotherhood supporters, al-Qaeda and terrorists. This is not true, but it’s worth noting that all the fighters I met … were Sunni Muslims, and most were pious. They fight for a multitude of reasons: for their friends, for their neighborhoods, for their villages, for their province, for revenge, for self-defense, for dignity, for their brethren in other parts of the country who are also fighting. They do not read religious literature or listen to sermons. Their views on Islam are consistent with the general attitudes of Syrian Sunni society, which is conservative and religious.  

“‘Because there are many small groups in the armed opposition, it is difficult to describe their ideology in general terms. The Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood ideologies are not important in Syria and do not play a significant role in the revolution. But most Syrian Sunnis taking part in the uprising are themselves devout.’

“He could just as well have been describing average citizens in Egypt, or Libya, or Tunisia, or other nations in the region. So we should be a little more careful before we embrace the Assad regime’s propaganda about the opposition in Syria. We certainly should not let these misconceptions cause us to keep the armed resistance in Syria at arm’s length, because that is just self-defeating. And I can assure you that Al-Qaeda is not pursuing the same policy. They are eager to try to hijack the Syrian revolution, just as they have tried to hijack the Arab Spring movements in Egypt, and Tunisia, and Libya, and elsewhere. They are trying, but so far, they are failing. The people of these countries are broadly rejecting everything Al-Qaeda stands for. They are not eager to trade secular tyranny for theocratic tyranny.

“The other reason Al-Qaeda is failing in Tunisia, and Egypt, and Libya is because the community of nations, especially the United States, has supported them. We are giving them a better alternative. The surest way for Al-Qaeda to gain a foothold in Syria is for us to turn our backs on those brave Syrians who are fighting to defend themselves. After all, Sunni Iraqis were willing to ally with Al-Qaeda when they felt desperate enough. But when America gave them a better alternative, they turned their guns on Al-Qaeda. Why should it be different in Syria?

“Another objection to providing military assistance to the Syrian opposition is that the conflict has become a sectarian civil war, and our intervention would enable the Sunni majority to take a bloody and indiscriminate revenge against the Alawite minority. This is a serious and legitimate concern, and it is only growing worse the longer the conflict goes on. As we saw in Iraq, or Lebanon before it, time favors the hard-liners in a conflict like this. The suffering of Sunnis at the hands of Assad only stokes the temptation for revenge, which in turn only deepens fears among the Alawites, and strengthens their incentive to keep fighting. For this reason alone, it is all the more compelling to find a way to end the bloodshed as soon as possible.

“Furthermore, the risks of sectarian conflict will exist in Syria whether we get more involved or not. And we will at least have some ability to try to mitigate these risks if we work to assist the armed opposition now. That will at least help us to know them better, and to establish some trust and exercise some influence with them, because we took their side when they needed it most. We should not overstate the potential influence we could gain with opposition groups inside Syria, but it will only diminish the longer we wait to offer them meaningful support. And what we can say for certain is that we will have no influence whatsoever with these people if they feel we abandoned them. This is a real moral dilemma, but we cannot allow the opposition in Syria to be crushed at present while we worry about the future.

“We also hear it said, including by the Administration, that we should not contribute to the militarization of the conflict. If only Russia and Iran shared that sentiment. Instead, they are shamelessly fueling Assad’s killing machine. We need to deal with reality as it is, not as we wish it to be – and the reality in Syria today is largely a one-sided fight where the aggressors are not lacking for military means and zeal.

“Indeed, Assad appears to be fully committed to crushing the opposition at all costs. Iran and Russia appear to be fully committed to helping him do it. The many Syrians who have taken up arms to defend themselves and their communities appear to be fully committed to acquiring the necessary weapons to resist Assad. And leading Arab states appear increasingly committed to providing those weapons. The only ones who seem overly concerned about a militarization of the conflict are the United States and some of our allies. The time has come to ask a different question: Who do we want to win in Syria – our friends or our enemies?

“There are always plenty of reasons not to do something, and we can list them clearly in the case of Syria. We know the opposition is divided. We know the armed resistance inside the country lacks cohesion or command and control. We know that some elements of the opposition may sympathize with violent extremist ideologies or harbor dark thoughts of sectarian revenge. We know that many of Syria’s immediate neighbors remain cautious about taking overly provocative actions that could undermine Assad. And we know the American people are weary of conflict – justifiably so – and would rather focus on domestic problems.

“These are realities, but while we are compelled to acknowledge them, we are not condemned to accept them forever. With resolve, principled leadership, and wise policy, we can shape better realities. That is what the Syrian people have done.

“By no rational calculation should this uprising against Assad still be going on. The Syrian people are outmatched. They are outgunned. They are lacking for food, and water, and other basic needs. They are confronting a regime whose disregard for human dignity and capacity for sheer savagery is limitless. For an entire year, the Syrian people have faced death, and those unspeakable things worse than death, and still they have not given up. Still they take to the streets to protest peacefully for justice. Still they carry on their fight. And they do so on behalf of many of the same universal values we share, and many of the same interests as well.

“These people are our allies. They want many of the same things we do. They have expanded the boundaries of what everyone thought was possible in Syria. They have earned our respect, and now they need our support to finish what they started. The Syrian people deserve to succeed, and shame on us if we fail to help them.”