MESOP : OBAMA SPENDS SOME MORE MONEY TO SYRIAN OPPOSITION

Reports emerged Thursday afternoon that President Obama would seek $500 million to, per the Associated Press (AP), “train and arm vetted members of the Syrian opposition” as rebel forces struggle to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime. The aid, should it be approved, would according to the Washington Post “mark the first direct U.S. military participation in the Syrian conflict.”

Recent months have seen increased pressure from current and former U.S. officials to provide assistance to moderate rebel groups in Syria, including Secretary of State John Kerry, who last month told representatives from the Syrian opposition that the international community had “wasted a year” by failing to coordinate on efforts to provide assistance to groups fighting Assad. Moderate rebel groups have been squeezed out by what analysts have identified as a regime effort to directly bolster Shiite forces – both Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) assets are known to be on the ground – and to less directly boost Sunni extremists. Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, earlier this year described how Damascus selectively targeted moderate opposition elements, not engaging jihadists and sometimes even freeing the captured ones. The regime has also received and presumably paid for energy resources that emerged from ISIS-controlled areas of Syria.