Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said in an interview with CNN that the Syrian conflict and its consequences will continue for another decade.

According to the general, the problem is that the war in Syria has turned into a regional conflict, which already involves Iraq and Lebanon. At the same time, extremists took leading roles in this confrontation on both sides: groups associated with Al-Qaeda on the one hand and Hezbollah on the other. As Dempsey explained, the Syrian situation is no longer simply a popular uprising against a dictator, but a rivalry, if not an acute conflict, between the two branches of Islam - the Shiite and Sunni versions of this religion.

“This problem will drag on for ten years. And if we don’t think about it as regional and long-term, I’m afraid we can make a lot of mistakes,” the general predicted.

He made these statements in response to accusations of passivity and inactivity leveled at the Barack Obama administration by Republican Party hawks. For example, Senator John McCain from Arizona, known for his aggressive approach to solving foreign policy problems, said in one of his last speeches: “The administration, as usual, is stomping around in indecision and immersed in reasoning, although events are developing at an alarming speed. Syria is the best example of this. We are simply watching how thousands of Hezbollah fighters entered Syria, how Russia continues to supply Bashar al-Assad with weapons, how the number of victims has already exceeded 100 thousand people.”

According to McCain, Obama's decision to send small arms to the rebels is not only belated, but also insufficient: “Assault rifles and machine guns are powerless against tanks.”

The American leadership is extremely reluctant to accept proposals to decisively intervene in the Syrian conflict. First, the White House argues that such intervention could strengthen the position of Middle Eastern terrorist organizations and turn Syria into a haven for all local radicals and extremists. Secondly, any intervention in Syrian problems is extremely negatively perceived by American public opinion: the vast majority of US residents are confident that their country should stay away from the war in Syria.

Meanwhile, the rebels have already begun to receive heavy (anti-tank and anti-aircraft) weapons through “gray” channels from the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf. Local “charitable” organizations that provide assistance to radical Islamists around the world provide weapons and money to precisely those organizations that in the United States are considered associated with al-Qaeda.

US Chief of Staff predicted “10 years of problems” in Syria