REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, ANKARA/BEIRUT - The United States is considering a no-fly zone in Syria, potentially its first direct intervention into the two-year-old civil war, Western diplomats said on Friday, after the White House said Syria had crossed a "red line" by using nerve gas.
After months of deliberation, President Barack Obama's administration said on Thursday it would now arm opposition group, having obtained proof the Syrian government used chemical weapons against fighters trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Two senior Western diplomats said Washington is looking into a no-fly zone close to Syria's southern border with Jordan.
"Washington is considering a no-fly zone to help Assad's opponents," one diplomat said. He said it would be limited "time-wise and area-wise, possibly near the Jordanian border", giving no further details.
Imposing a no-fly zone would require the United States to destroy Syria's sophisticated Russian-built air defenses, thrusting it into the war with the sort of action NATO used to help topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya two years ago. Washington says it has not ruled it out, but a decision is not "imminent".
"We have not made any decision to pursue a military operation such as a no-fly zone. And we have a range of contingency plans that we've drawn up," US Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said on Thursday.
"A no-fly zone … would carry with it great and open-ended costs for the United States and the international community. It's far more complex to undertake the type of effort, for instance, in Syria than it was in Libya."
Any such move would also come up against a potential veto from Assad's ally Russia in the UN Security Council. The Kremlin dismissed US evidence of Assad's use of nerve gas.
"I will say frankly that what was presented to us by the Americans does not look convincing," President Vladimir Putin's senior foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said. "It would be hard even to call them facts."
France said a no-fly zone would be impossible without UN Security Council authorization, which made it unlikely for now. Nevertheless, Washington has quietly taken steps that would make it easier, moving Patriot surface-to-air missiles, war planes and more than 4,000 troops into Jordan in the past week, officially as part of an annual exercise but making clear that the assets could stay on when the war games are over.
Syria's civil war grew out of protests that swept across the Arab world in 2011, becoming by far the deadliest of those uprisings and the most difficult to resolve, with powers across the Middle East squaring off on sectarian lines.
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