 The subcommittee will come to order. Before I give our remarks, I wanted to point out that Mr. Connolly was kind enough to point out that the title of our hearing was a little pre-judgmental. So we will be careful with the pre-judgment titles of the hearing. Although my statement will not follow that caveat. But after recognizing myself and ranking member Deutsch for five minutes each for our opening statements, we will then now recognize the other members seeking recognition for one minute each. We will hear from our witnesses. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. And without objection, all of your written statements will be made a part of the record and members may have five days to insert statements or questions for the record subject to the length limitation in the rules. And the Chair now recognizes herself for five minutes. It's been over two years since the popular uprising sparked up across Syria against Al-Assad and his murderous regime. Amidst the backdrop of the Arab Spring, thousands of Syrians demonstrated against Assad calling for the despotic ruler to step down to release political prisoners and institute democratic reforms. These protesters were met swiftly with the harsh hand of Assad as he unleashed his police who doled out brutal beatings upon the demonstrators resulting in many deaths. Now as we enter the third year of this conflict, the Assad regime has been responsible for the murder of over 80,000 Syrians. Over 1.5 people have fled seeking refuge in other countries. And this administration had an opportunity to support the demonstrators from the beginning who took to the streets demanding that Assad step down. Yet just like it failed to voice a full-throated support for the demonstrators in Iran after the 2009 elections, it was definitely silent and failed to advance the cause for democratic reform. Instead of supporting the popular uprisings from the onset and immediately calling for Assad to step down, President Obama waited five months to publicly call for his removal. The delayed response also allowed for extremist groups and al-Qaeda affiliates to move in, to co-op the movement, setting up the bloody conflict that we see every day. There are tens of thousands dead, millions who have been displaced, and the conflict continues to spiral out of control. It has placed an incredible burden on our allies in the region, like Jordan, which takes in thousands of Syrian refugees daily, and rightfully fears that what might come next should the fighting spill over into its own area. But I understand that there are no perfect solutions for this crisis. Each option before us has its risks, and I firmly believe that what we need is a political solution in Syria. We cannot shoot our way out of this mess. We need to work with our allies in the region who fear the repercussions of a protracted conflict in Syria, and we need to address the serious issue of Moscow continuing to arm the regime. An influx of Russian arms into Syria has escalated this battle and has helped to prop up Assad. If Moscow does not cease arming the regime, the United States should re-evaluate our relationship with Russia. Together with my colleague Brad Sherman, I introduced H.R. 893, the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Accountability Act, that would address this issue head-on. I have always and will continue to believe that we should not arm the rebels. There is just no way of guaranteeing that they will remain loyal to the United States and would be willing to promote democratic principles and respect human rights post Assad. The opposition is too fractured, too convoluted to be able to ensure that the arms don't eventually end up in the wrong hands that may one day turn these weapons against us or our allies like Israel. What we should be focusing on is breaking the Iran-Hezbollah-Assad link, because if Assad falls today, I fear what will happen tomorrow. Syria is the lynchpin that holds Iran's strategic influence into the greater Middle East. Should Assad fall, Iran and Hezbollah might quickly move the power vacuum. And should Iran and Hezbollah get a hold of Syria's chemical weapons, not only would this cause greater tensions in the region and seriously danger and danger our friend and ally Israel, but it could spark an even greater conflict. The President has repeatedly warned that the utilization or the moving around of chemical weapons in Syria would change his calculus, and it is a red line that should not be passed. Reports suggest that chemical weapons have been used on a handful of occasions, yet the United States has balked at calling it so. In doing so, it sent a message not just to Assad but to the opposition and to other countries in the region, such as Iran, Egypt and North Korea, who seek to test our will that we will not, indeed, hold our line in the sand. And with that, I yield for his opening statement to Mr. Deutsch, my Florida colleague. Thank you, Chairman Ross. Layton in for holding today's hearing. Syria continues to be one of the most pressing issues before us. I thank our witnesses as well for appearing here today. I hope today will be a productive discussion on how we can move U.S. policy toward Syria forward and notwithstanding the title of the hearings that this not devolve into two hours of political grandstanding. Let me be clear from the outset, there are no easy answers, and there have been miscalculations in the world's approach thus far, but there are no easier painless solutions. It should, of course, be the policy of the United States to pursue a negotiated settlement. Yet even with the seeming endorsement of the Russians, peace talks are proving a long way from reality. It has now been nearly 27 months since the uprising in Syria began. Over 80,000 lives have been lost. There are 1.6 million refugees officially registered with the U.N. with that number likely substantially higher. There are some 4 million internally displaced people, and these staggering numbers will only rise more quickly as this conflict worsens. We've talked about the effects of potential spillover in the region which unfortunately is becoming a reality. There were attacks from Syria on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon last week, and mortars fired into the Golan Heights. Iran is fully dug in, sending every kind of support imaginable to Assad. We cannot overlook the seriousness of Syria's impact on the entire Middle East. As I said back in March, when the full committee held a hearing on Syria, the decisions that we have to make are difficult. But as I said then, just because they're difficult doesn't mean that we shouldn't be making them. None of us want to see the United States embroiled in another conflict. But I do believe that there are ways the United States can be involved in Syria without putting American soldiers' lives at risk. For those that argue a more serious strategic U.S. response is needed, one that includes providing lethal assistance to opposition groups, I would say that the fractured coalition we saw last week in Istanbul should warn us that the opposition lacks organization and coherent leadership. Our assistance should be used as a tool to get the opposition to encourage the opposition leadership to get its act together. But beyond the discussions of whether to arm, who to arm, and how to do it, there are real steps that we can take now to address the humanitarian crisis. The United States has pledged $510 million to humanitarian assistance for those affected by the violence in Syria, committed to providing $250 million in transition support to the Syrian Opposition Council. We continue to talk about creating a humanitarian corridor which could have a significant impact on our ability to provide aid to those in need. There are real steps we can take to help our allies who are sheltering hundreds of thousands of refugees, including pushing international donors to fulfill their pledges to countries in need. And in the immediate term, there are very real steps we can take to let our friends in the region know that we will not tolerate efforts to undermine U.S. interests in Syria. Our strategic relationship with our allies in the Gulf is crucial to ensuring their security and regional stability. Reports yesterday indicate the United States will send a Patriot missile battery and F-16 fighters to Jordan for a drill and may keep them there. We have already stationed a Patriot battery in southern Turkey. There must be an understanding that it is in all of our interests to ensure that we are supporting the opposition groups that share our mutual security goals. I would urge the administration to use every bit of leverage with Turkey and Qatar to prevent the arming of extremist groups, and to work together with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to identify and support moderate opposition forces. Should the U.S. and Western allies choose to move ahead with the no-fly zone, the Arab League must provide support for these efforts. And Russia cannot obstruct these efforts, or for that matter any other efforts to end Assad's reign of terror. Madam Chairman, I appreciate you calling this hearing today because I agree that the U.S. policy towards Syria has not yet yielded an end to the conflict, but I would caution that there is no magic bullet, there is no quick fix. Our focus now must be on deciding the best course of action to prevent the continued slaughter of the Syrian people, to ensure our own national security, and to prevent the conflict from destabilizing the region. And I yield back the amounts of money. Thank you very much for an excellent opening statement. I will now recognize members for a one-minute opening statement, starting with Mr. Steve Shabbat of Ohio, who is the chairman of our subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for calling this important and timely hearing this morning. Let's face it, the situation continues to deteriorate in Syria. The list of innocent victims slaughtered by the Assad regime grows daily, and the Obama Administration's Syria policy continues to remain murky at best. I look forward to hearing from our excellent panel of witnesses here this morning, and I hope they can address a couple of issues of particular concern to me. First, the role of Hezbollah and its future in a post-Assad era. Will it remain the powerful force that it is today? Will its role in neighboring Lebanon, for example, be affected? And how would the fall of Assad affect the future role of Iran in the region? I am also concerned about how the growing turmoil in the region might affect the stability of Jordan. It is reported that nearly a half million Syrian refugees have registered in Jordan to date that one camp alone currently has more than 140,000 people. So I look forward to hearing from our panel and hope that our witnesses today can address some of these important issues. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Shabbat. We will hear from Mr. Connolly from Virginia. Thank you so much, Madam Chairman, and thank you for your sensitivity on the title of this hearing, because it presupposes there is something for us to manage. And I would contend that there are no easy choices for the United States in Syria, and to suggest otherwise is itself misleading. I do think we have four very important concerns, sets of concerns. One is, who do we support? And you have very ably laid out some of the difficulties in that question yourself, Madam Chairman. Secondly, our concern of the spread of the conflict regionally, it is already sucking in Hezbollah from Lebanon, Iran, and of concern obviously to Turkey in terms of cross-border shelling. Thirdly, there is the Russia's role in blatantly re-arming the Assad regime. And that has to be a concern in our bilateral relationship in the future of it. And finally, there is the arsenal of chemical weapons and their possible utilization and deployment as the conflict matures. Those are legitimate concerns I hope we will address in today's hearing. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Connolly. Mr. Kinzinger of Illinois is recognized. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I am just disappointed in this whole, in everything that is going on. I mean, I think if you talk to our allies, you look around the world, people are just asking, what is the United States position? What are you doing? You know, I am a big believer that when America retreats from the world, chaos ensues. And so when we see America ceding its role of leadership around the globe, we see what is occurring in the Middle East, which is nobody knows where anybody is at. Nobody knows where the United States stands at. And I think this is an extension of something that was coined a little bit ago, a year or two ago, the lead from behind strategy, which to me is a shocking secession of American leadership around the globe. I am very concerned with what is going on in Syria, but I am more concerned with the perception that the United States has given up on the Middle East, and that the United States is looking for the easy way out. So I look forward to the panel and your discussion and your insight into what is going on, and I yield back the rest of my time. Thank you very much, sir. Mr. Schneider of Illinois is recognized. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for the time. Thank you to the witnesses. The current conflict in Syria has created an untenable situation which threatens the existence of a future unified state while also compounding concerns over how this civil war will ultimately be resolved. Many have speculated over the future of Syria and its viability moving forward as an intact entity. Our national strategy must embrace certain core principles in evaluating additional engagement in Syria. First, I believe we have to identify, isolate and secure the weapons of mass destruction chemical and biological. Second, I think we have to diligently act to make sure that we support our allies in the region, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, the Gulf States, to make sure that the situation in Syria doesn't bring them down. And third, I think we have to seek a viable state with a functional government that maintains the geographic continuity of Syria and avoids the collapse of the state which would threaten our allies in the region. These core principles provide a template for evaluating the potential past forward in Syria. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses on their perspective in addressing these critical concerns. Thank you, sir. Next, we will hear from Dr. Yoho, my Florida colleague. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Good morning. I look forward to hearing your testimonies today. I look forward to hearing feedback from you guys and thinking outside of the box of how we can fix a situation or help fix a situation and what role the United States government has in this so that we don't repeat the errors of our foreign policies over the last 30 years. So I look forward to hearing that. Thank you, and I yield back. Thank you, sir. Mr. Kennedy of Massachusetts is recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair, for calling this hearing. I want to thank the ranking member as well, and thank our panelists and witnesses for coming in and look forward to hearing their testimony. I too, like all of the panelists or all of the members have indicated am very concerned over recent developments, arraigning continued support and increasing support for the Assad regime. Russia's recent sale of advanced weapons and Hezbollah's flood of fighters into the region as well. I think that breeds two large questions in terms of the millions of refugees and internally displaced persons and the prospects for a wider war in the region. I know that the United States and Secretary Kerry, I believe, has done an admirable job trying to bring regional powers to one table. That's going to happen in the coming days. And I would be eager to hear your opinion about prospects for any sort of negotiations that are going to take place in Geneva and what is going to follow, what is going to be the ramifications of that, depending on how fruitful those discussions are. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Messer of Indiana is recognized. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for this opportunity. I want to thank both you and the ranking member for your foresight and having this hearing. I think the American people see the challenges in Syria as a mess with no clear answers. And probably the most cogent analysis that I've heard of what's happening there was a take on the famous Las Vegas line that what happens in Syria won't stay in Syria. That much is clear. And I look forward to your insights today in helping us figure out what the appropriate policy is for our nation. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Congresswoman Meng of New York. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And thank you, Mr. Ranking Member, for holding this important hearing. I look forward to hearing from our panelists today about possible new avenues for addressing this conflict. In particular, I'd like to explore how renewed efforts in Europe to curtail Hezbollah financing might affect the organization. This presents an interesting opportunity as Hezbollah will be stretching itself thin, both politically and financially by engaging in Syria. I'd also like to explore our relationship with the Kurds in the Syrian context. The Kurds are organized, well-financed, and relatively pro-American. In Northeast Syria, they're maintaining control of their territory and battling al-Nusrah. The Kurds are not a panacea to the Syrian problem, but I wonder whether we could be doing more with them, particularly in light of recently improved Turkish and Kurdish relations. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Higgins of New York is recognized. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just also want to say that I just caution people not to fall into the trap of believing that there are absolutes here and everything is black and white. There's a lot of gray. And it's not a question of beating the Assad regime and handing it over to the good guys. They may be a little bit better. They may be a lot worse. And this is the problem that we run into. The opposition is made up of at least eight different groups, many of the transitions that have occurred there. You've had three different leaders of the opposition in the past four weeks alone. Syria is going to have to figure this out. All nation building, unfortunately, and in human history requires some degree of civil war. And in the American Civil War, in 1860, the population of America was 34 million people, and there were over 600,000 deaths. In Syria, a nation of 24 million people, you have 100,000 deaths. Not that we want to tolerate that, but we can't get involved in another civil war in the Middle East. That would be number three. And the lack of American presence is not radicalizing Syria. Syria is radicalizing. Keep in mind, in Iraq, we went in there, took out Saddam Hussein, dissolved the army and the bath party, and then after that, Iraq became radicalized. So oftentimes, the hard reality of this is that these nations have to figure this out. We can't always nation build in the Middle East. We have to build the middle class right here in America. Thank you, sir. Mr. Cicillini of Rhode Island. Thank you, Chairman Rosalton, and Ranking Member Deutsch for holding today's hearing on these important conflict and humanitarian crisis in Syria. And I thank the witnesses for being here and looking forward to your testimony. The question before our subcommittee today is how and whether the United States should involve itself in the ongoing civil war in Syria, both on our own and with our partners in the region and around the world. And it is a very complicated question. But one thing is clear. I believe the global community must respond. In the last two years, as he's tried to maintain his tenure script on power, President Bashar al-Assad and his government have brutally and indiscriminately attacked rebel forces and civilians within Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries or have been displaced internally. By deploying air and artillery assaults in residential areas, Bashar al-Assad has brutally targeted and murdered thousands of civilians. I hope we will focus today on a response to the ongoing situation in Syria that provides humanitarian aid, addresses what has become a serious refugee crisis in the region, incorporates a global comprehensive strategy to end the violence and promote stability in this important region and the world. I look forward to hearing the perspectives of the witnesses that we have assembled here today to discuss this important topic. I thank the chair and I yield back. Thank you very much. In seeing no further requests for time, the chair is pleased to introduce our distinguished panelists. First, we will welcome Mr. Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He focuses on Lebanon, Syria and Hezbollah as an expert on U.S. foreign policy towards Syria and non-state actors and terrorist groups. Mr. Badran has written extensively on Hezbollah and has testified before Congress and the European Parliament. Welcome, Tony. Next, we will welcome Ms. Danielle Pletka, the Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Prior to this, you served for 10 years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ms. Pletka has written extensively on the Middle East, democracy and terrorism and has testified before our committee on these issues several times. Welcome back, Danielle. Third, Dr. John Alterman is the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to this, he served as a member of the policy planning staff at the Department of State and as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. In addition to his policy work, he has had a long career in academia having taught at the John Hopkins University, the George Washington University, and Harvard. Thank you very much, and we will begin with you, Mr. Bondren. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and the ranking member Deutsch and the distinguished members of the committee. And I thank you again for inviting me here today to testify on today's very important hearing. As the United States has struggled to define its Syria policy over the past two years, the Syrian war has metastasized regrettably along very predictable lines. The debate in Washington about U.S. policy has been largely framed in terms of either staying out of the conflict or an Iraq-style intervention. Before we discuss specific tactics, I suggest that we should start by asking, what are strategic goals in Syria? The primary problem with Washington's current policy is not that it has been too reluctant to get involved, it's been that it's reading the strategic map incorrectly. As it stands today, Syria has effectively divided. The rebels are in control of much of the North and the East with some regime pockets in those areas. And the regime, meanwhile, controls the coastal mountains in the Northwest, much of the central city of Homs, and most of the capital of Damascus. Recently, the regime with direct support from Iran and Hezbollah launched a campaign to secure the corridor from Homs to Damascus and recapture the strategic town of Al-Qusayr on the Lebanese border. News this morning actually is that the town has fallen in their hands. The plan is of consolidating the regime in a reduced but clearly defined enclave. And this is Assad's plan B in Syria, but it's also Iran's plan B in Syria. Iran has signaled very clearly that it considers the toppling of the Assad regime to be a red line that it will spare no expense to prevent from happening. Therefore, to safeguard its core interest, Iran seeks to ensure the regime's continuity in a reinforced Canton with access to the Mediterranean and territorial contiguity with Tehran's subsidiary in Lebanon, Hezbollah. This explains the battle for Al-Qusayr. As you can see on the map, the town lies across the border from Hezbollah's north, a stronghold in northeastern Lebanon. Securing Al-Qusayr aims to protect the corridor along Lebanon's eastern border down to Damascus and also secures the land bridge from the Syrian ports on the Mediterranean as well as from the Damascus airport further south and to ensure supplies to Hezbollah controlled territory in the Beqaa. This enclave is a vital island of influence for the IRGC on the Mediterranean, adjoined and flanked by Hezbollah and Lebanon. In effect, this is what the Assad regime today is, an IRGC protectorate. Assad is reliant on the Iranians for funds, arms, hardware and personnel. Hezbollah is spearheading operations on various fronts and other Iranian assets from the pro-Iranian Iraqi militias are deployed in Damascus and elsewhere. Iran views the battle for Syria in strategic terms. Unfortunately, current U.S. policy does not and that's the problem. More than two years after the Syrian uprising, U.S. policy remains unclear. What is our primary interest in Syria? Do we want to see the Assad regime toppled or not? Washington's position is ambiguous. If the regime into Iran is indeed our principal foe and I submit that it is, then U.S. policy should proceed from this basic starting point. We should begin by clearly and credibly defining the goal of U.S. policy to be the removal not just of Assad personally, but of his regime. U.S. policy should explicitly state that the maintenance of the structures of Iranian influence in Syria is antithetical to U.S. interests. Currently, the policy seems more focused on the faith of Assad himself, but that misses the larger strategic context. Worse still, the perception in Damascus is that in contrast with Iran's commitment to the survival of the regime, the U.S. lacks such commitment and such strategic clarity. The current U.S. posture is not cost-free, both on the moral and strategic levels, aside from the horrific toll in human lives. The policy as it stands now is on course to preside over the division of Syria into an IRGC island in possession of chemical weapons and advanced Russian strategic weapons system in one part of the country and a patchwork of militias in the rest. U.S. must now devise a two-fold strategy, prioritizing the threat to be first to break the Iranian archipelago of influence in the Mediterranean. To deny the Iranian victory, the U.S. must target the avenues of Iranian support to the Syrian regime. That would mean striking the Damascus airport and various airfields in Western Syria using standoff weapons if necessary to achieve these results. In tandem with this measure, U.S. should exercise leadership, bringing together allies that have been eager from the beginning for more robust action and use their resources and their intelligence channels to various rebel groups using a two-pronged position approach, one on the border with Turkey in the north using Turkey's excellent relations with some of the rebel groups fighting there and similar policy in Jordan in the south. To conclude, openly stating that handing Iran a strategic defeat in Syria is the priority for the U.S. is where it must all start. Exercising credible U.S. leadership to rally already-eager allies around that stated objective should follow and the rest will flow from there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Badrin. Ms. Bledka. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Mr. Deutsche, I'm honored to be back before the committee and thank you for holding this enormously important hearing. I think we've gone over a lot of the history behind how we got to this moment in Syria. What we see right now on the ground is the Iranian forces that Tony talked about, not just IRGC, but also Iranian ground troops. We see Hezbollahis fighting on the ground. We see al-Qaeda forces fighting on the ground. We see Russia. We see Qatar. We see Saudi Arabia. We see Iran. We see all of these countries in the mix. And of course, the one country or the group of countries that you don't see are Western democratic nations. That means that anybody who shares our values, our ambitions on the ground is disarmed, underarmed, and underrepresented. Basically, everybody else is coming to the fight, and we have not. That's my view, and I do believe that we have a firm interest, not simply because Syria is a lynchpin for Iran, as you said, Madam Chairman, not simply because this is Iran's most important ally, but because we have a humanitarian, a moral, and a strategic interest in Syria. I think what we need to do is pretty straightforward. It's been said time and again, and I think there are reasonably good arguments to make for how we can step forward. We shouldn't forget that upwards of 80,000, perhaps even as many as 120,000 people have been killed. If you've seen the pictures of the children that were killed over this last weekend, buried in mass graves along the Syrian coasts, I can assure you that the notion that we somehow have no interest would be abhorrent to us. We also have an interest because of the credibility of the President of the United States. We may like him, we may not like him, we may agree with him, we may not agree with him, we may have voted for him and we may not. That doesn't matter. He's the President of the United States. He said that Assad should step down, Assad hasn't stepped down. He said that chemical weapons were a red line for his administration, a quote game changer. He said it. In fact, chemical weapons have been used. The UN confirmed that it believes they've been used. Russia and, excuse me, France and England have both suggested they believe as our intelligence community. In fact, if this was a red line, what does this say about the credibility of the President of the United States? Forget about Syria, let's assert that we don't care about Syria. What does this say to the Iranian government about our credibility on its nuclear program if in fact on the question of Syria we're not serious? It suggests to the world that the United States is in fact a paper tiger and I believe we're behaving as one. What we need to do is vet and arm those rebels who embrace democratic norms, have a demonstrated distance from al-Qaeda and related groups and who have committed to turning over Assad's illegal weaponry, chemical weapons, missiles, and other weapons of mass destruction. We should use standoff weaponry, such as the Tomahawk missile, to disable Syrian airfields and render inoperable the Syrian air force and its resupply hubs that are now facilitating Assad's advance. We should consider with our allies in NATO and in the Arab League the imposition of a no-fly zone. I don't believe that this is the demanding exercise that some have suggested. In fact, Syria's Russian-supplied air defenses are probably at less than 50%. Some have suggested even at 10% capacity. They have not been used. The notion that we could not take those out, we, the United States could not take those out, is almost unthinkable. And we should immediately impose new sanctions on Hezbollah, including broad travel sanctions, freezing accounts of Hezbollah-owned companies, related banks, isolating families, and supporters of Hezbollah. We should ban the entry into the United States of all Hezbollah officials, their immediate families, officers, and relatives of banks and companies with substantial Hezbollah holdings. Without his air force, Assad will be far more vulnerable without Hezbollah on the ground, or at least if Hezbollah is hobbled, they, Assad's forces will be far more vulnerable. The reason we need to tip the balance should be pretty obvious. What should we do once Assad falls? Also, a vital question, and we need to answer that question now and not dither tactically while groups alien to us take over. What do we support? What do we support? Democratic rule, equal rights, secularism, the protection of minorities, women's rights, and free markets, okay? Throughout the Middle East, countries have moved away from these values, and we have done nothing. Throughout the countries of the Arab Spring, we have seen, as each of these countries has moved away, and we have continued to give aid a pace. We have not emphasized these values. We haven't rewarded people who share those values. You, this committee, members of Congress, have an enormous say in how we give our taxpayer dollars to these countries, to these governments, and to NGOs, and we have to change the way that we administer our assistance. Just a last word, for those who ask why America should care, okay? Remember, when we allow extremism and tyranny to flourish without counterbalancing it, we pay a heavy, heavy price. We may not pay that price immediately, but we will ultimately. We have an important strategic choice. We have an important moral choice, and we should do the right thing. If the president doesn't wanna put a strategy in place, I suggest that you should. Thank you very much. Thank you. Dr. Alderman. Madam Chair, Ranking Member Deutsch, distinguished members, it's an honor and a pleasure to appear before you again today, this time to talk about US policy towards Syria. It's hard for anyone to look at Syria and be satisfied, least of all US government officials. There's an important difference, though, between being dissatisfied with conditions in Syria and terming US policy a failure. There's an even bigger difference between being dissatisfied with policy and implementing one that will actually work better. As we discovered all too well in Iraq, not all alternatives to a troubled policy are an improvement. Indeed, from George H.W. Bush's policy of engagement with Iraq in the late 1980s to a policy of course of diplomacy in the 1990s to a policy of invasion and reconstruction in the 2000s, we've seen several decades of US policies that have failed to meet even modest expectations set for them. Iraq is a reminder of our limited ability to shape outcomes and complex and polarized situations and a reminder that the quality of outcome sometimes has only a distant relationship to the level of effort and resources that we put into them. Six years ago, the full Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing with a somewhat more sober title than the present hearing entitled that Iraq is the escalation working. And Madam Chair, at that hearing you quite correctly said, before writing off Iraq as lost, we must ask ourselves what alternative policy there is and what are the consequences for the safety of our troops and for the United States' strategic interests in predetermining defeat? I totally agree. And it's that constructive spirit that you brought to the task then that I'd like to bring to the table today. As you suggested at the time, the proper measure of a policy is the prospect of its alternatives. In order to judge that, one must first decide one's interests that the policy is seeking to preserve and the tools at hand to protect those interests. To me, the starting point is that Syria is strategically important because of its effects on its neighbors and its neighborhood. By both geography and design, Syria is a hub state. All five, all five of Syria's neighbors are important to the United States. The second aspect that needs attention is the rise of jihadi groups in Syria who feed on the conflict to recruit worldwide. The third aspect is the malign efforts of Iran, Russia, and others to shape a status quo in the Middle East that's deeply unfavorable to American interests. The written testimony goes into considerably more detail than I can do so here, but I have five basic recommendations for this policy going forward which represent modifications of our current policy rather than its abandonment. The first is safe havens. I share the American public's caution about committing troops to Syria and I fear that we could be drawn into actions that we neither intend nor desire. But the first point I made about the fragility of neighboring states straining under the flow of refugees needs attention. It seems to me we should be actively considering the creation of safe havens. The key is to have limited objectives in doing so and not to provide a base for people in those areas to try to overthrow the regime because ultimately that just puts us into the fight. Second is weapons. I see wisdom in providing limited weapons for self-defense with the desire of helping civilians protect their homes rather than with the hope that weapons can tip the balance in the war. On diplomacy, as many of you said, we have been pursuing diplomacy with friends and foes alike but from the outside it looks to me like there's too much agreeing to disagree. We can't care about everything but we should care deeply about the diplomacy surrounding Syria and make clear that it affects the core of our relationships. This is true for our allies. This is true for our relations with Russia and I think that we have to be more creative as we deal with Russia, finding potential future courses of policy that are more agreeable to us than they are to the Russians. And intelligence, Jihadi networks are notoriously hard to penetrate but given the fact that they have to recruit so much this should be a bonanza for friendly services to infiltrate Al Qaeda and its affiliate networks and try to understand them. We should also look for ways to share intelligence with carefully vetted fighting groups in order to help compensate the superior aerial coverage of the Assad regime. In terms of settlement, I agree with you, Madam Chair, that as odious as the Assad regime is there's little question that even more odious characters lurk in Syria. A settlement that arises from a negotiated transfer of power stands a far greater chance of improving Syrians lives than building from the ashes of even deeper sectarian killings and ethnic cleansing. I don't suggest this path because it's the perfect one but because it seems to me to be the best out of a series of really bad choices. We could clearly dislodge Bashar al-Assad with enough time, money and lives but it's unclear we want to pay that price for how we might shape the aftermath. There isn't a simple solution to the problem of Syria and even with the commitment of much greater funds, the battle is likely to last for many more years. When I worked on the Hill myself with Congressman Connolly, the US government supported decades-long insurgencies in Afghanistan and Nicaragua and helped defend the government of El Salvador in its own decade of war. Regardless of what happens to Bashar tomorrow, the problems of Syria will be with us for years to come. We all have hopes for Syria and I'd argue that sentiment in the United States is relatively unified as to what a positive outcome in Syria would look like. Yet rather than focus on our hopes, we have to focus on our needs. We must pursue a policy that meets those needs for Syria while being attendant to the other demands placed in our military and our government. Our interests call for focus and not for hopes. Thank you. Thank you very much for three excellent panelists. I'm going to ask on two issues, the use of chemical weapons and the role of Russia. You have all referred to that. In April, as you pointed out in his platka, the White House sent a letter to Congress that said intelligence agencies assessed chemical weapons had been used in Syria with varying degrees of confidence. And yesterday, as you said, France and Britain announced that they have confirmed that sarin had been used several times in the Syrian conflict. What should the United States and other responsible nations do to ensure that Assad's chemical weapons aren't used further if these reports are true? How can we prevent the theft or transfer by or to terrorist groups? How can we approach the difficult task of securing and safely dismantling the stockpile? How can we receive assurances from the opposition forces to allow us to do this if they succeed in ousting Assad? And turning to Russia, as we know, Russian arms have helped lead to the escalation of violence and bombings. And the addition of Russian weapons, whether they've been used totally or not, to the theater heightens tensions across the region, fearing that these advanced weapons systems could fall into the wrong hands, be turned against the U.S. or Israel. Russia clearly has a financial interest in arming Syria, has no interest in seemingly to stop selling arms to Assad and the latest sales announcement not only caused harm in Syria, but harms the diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia to try to broker a peace between the warring parties. How can we leverage our power to convince Russia to stop arming Assad and his forces, to stop its support for the regime, to try to negotiate a peaceful settlement that will bring this bloody conflict to an end? And if Russia continues to arm Assad, despite our best efforts to get Moscow to stop, would sanctions against Russia be an effective tool in our diplomatic toolbox to facilitate this? And we'll start with Mr. Bodran if you can keep the answers brief so we can get to three of them. Thank you. With regard to the Russian weapons system, it's important to understand what that means for Russia. On the one hand, the Russian position on Syria has not changed. They have an interest in the survival of this regime. It is a foothold for them in the region and it's an opportunity to sabotage U.S. interests as well. But now what happened also is that they're giving these advanced strategic weapons, be they the S-300 anti-aircraft or the anti-naval missiles that they gave. Those things now are effectively in the hand of an IRGC base on the Mediterranean. And this is something that we have to look at when we look at Israel's reaction to these things. It's important to draw the lesson from their actions. The Israelis have made- Let me just interrupt you and just get to the other two because we'll have two minutes. So briefly on the question. Briefly on the question of chemical weapons, there's no way to secure those chemical weapons through any of the steps that I advocated. A no-fly zone is not gonna secure chemical weapons. Neither is taking out Assad's air power. Neither is arming the opposition. The only way to secure chemical weapons 100% is if we put troops on the ground and we take them ourselves. And we don't wanna do that. None of us have recommended it. I didn't hear anybody on the dais recommended either. Nobody thinks this is a good idea. That means that if you preclude that option, you require somebody on the ground to win. Assad wins. Iran, as Tony said, Iran, Assad have these weapons. Of course they've had them all along. It didn't concern us as much two years ago. If the opposition wins, if the wrong guys in the opposition continue to prevail and they are right now the best armed. When you talk about arms getting into the hands of bad guys, let me promise you, arms are already in the hands of bad guys. Arms are in the hands of the worst guys. It's the better. And I appreciate John's statement because of course there is no good here. But the better guys are the least well armed. The bad guys are the best armed. The only way that we can secure these is to look for an outcome in which we can work with a party that is responsible and committed to the same or similar ideals as we. And now we're not on track. Thank you. Let me just give the last 30 seconds to Dr. Alderman. Madam Chair, just on the Russia issue, as I said, I think we have to first, as we negotiate with the Russians over this, we have to find alternatives. Future courses of policy, they like less than what we're doing. Appealing to their higher sensibilities, I think, isn't going to work. There are things we can offer that will make the Russians unhappy. There are things we can probably offer that make them happy. The Russians have a serious concern with terrorism and jihadism in the Caucasus. We may have things we can help them with. And I think that ultimately, we have to be negotiating better, not appealing to their higher instincts, but to their interests and understanding what those interests are. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Deutsch. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to the panel for excellent testimony. Dr. Alderman, I'll start with you. I continue to be frustrated with the actions of our allies that continue to undermine our security in the region. The United States shares security responsibilities for the Gulf with our allies. In fact, the United States spends a lot of money and sells a lot of arms to ensure that security. And while some have been supportive, there are those that continue to strengthen extremist groups. What leverage do we have to convince Qatar and Turkey, for example, that supporting extremist elements ultimately threatens regional security? Thank you very much for that question. It's hard to say what we should be doing that we're not doing, but it's hard to figure out exactly what we're doing. The Emir of Qatar was just here. I don't know the nature of those conversations. I don't know the extent to which the President spoke to him quite frankly about it. I think the nature of our deep relationships with these countries means that there are things we can both hold at risk and things we can reward. And there are many, many common interests that we should bring to bear. I think the key issue is elevating it, making it clear that this is very important to us, that there are things that we will not continue to do, things we will do less of, because we can't have people undermining what we consider a vital interest. What are those things, Dr. Alterman? Well, we have a very active air base at El Udeid. The Qataris remind us all the time that this is their sovereign territory. They make sure that we respect that. There are many places we could put an air base in the Gulf and we have other air bases in the Gulf. I think one of the things that I would suggest that we talk with the Qataris about if we haven't already is that our reliance on El Udeid so heavily may be something we have to reconsider. Ms. Plekka, you're nodding. Couldn't agree more. I think John's exactly right. I think the Qataris have basically been allowed cost-free to play both sides. They do the same thing with Iran. They do the same thing with the Salafi groups. And the fact that that has continued is because they play both sides with us as well. On the one side, we have El Udeid and they use that as leverage over us. We need to take that leverage away and we need to ensure that they are more isolated. I think the Saudis to a slightly lesser extent are also at fault here. You know, anytime you subcontract your foreign policy to the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which is what we've done in Syria, you end up with an outcome that isn't very happy. Look at Afghanistan. Mr. Raghuram. I actually disagree on that last point because the Saudi effort in arming the rebels through Jordan has been through groups that have been very much vetted and the United States has been actually quite pleased with those types of groups. They have great close working relationship with Jordanian intelligence. The thing we have to keep in mind though is that the reason why these groups, the more hardcore groups thrive, these hardcore group thrives when there's especially a sectarian environment where you see an Iranian explicitly Shiite offensive happening and there's nobody else coming to the aid. So they pose as a vanguard to help the Syrian people. To deny them that ability is, I think, what should be the U.S. role in Syria. Just looking ahead, let's assume that there's a willingness to, on the part of the Russians, to engage in a meaningful peace process. Let's assume that all the parties that would need to participate would be willing to participate. What's the, ultimately, what does a resolution look like in Syria? And I guess the fundamental question is, do the borders remain the same? And number one, and if not, what would a breakup of Syria or a redrawing of the boundaries look like and is that something that we should even be entertaining? Dr. Alterman. The borders in the Middle East, given that they were sort of drawn rather artificially on a map of food remarkably resilient, the only two places they've moved are in the Arab-Israeli conflict and in the two Yemens uniting. And otherwise, all these other countries that were just put together have been pretty durable. My guess is that, de jure, the borders of Syria will remain intact. The fact, though, there may be some diffusion of power the government may not either care to exercise control or be able to exercise control over the whole country. I think what we are looking at either way is a multi-year effort. And the biggest mistake we can make about Geneva is assuming that Geneva's going to have a solution. And if it doesn't have a solution, it's a failure and we have to find something else to do. We're gonna have to work on a process of dealing with the issues from Syria. When I was at the Zaturi refugee camp in Jordan a couple of weeks ago, the assumption there was that they would have a large multi-hundred-thousand-dollar refugee problem in Jordan for at least two more years. And that's if the problem gets solved tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Deutsch. Great questions. Mr. Shabbat is recognized for his time for questioning. Thank you, Madam Chair. I had mentioned in my opening statement a couple of questions that I had and those are the ones I wanted to go into. One was about Hezbollah, its growing role and what difference it's making and what sort of role do you think it'll play once this whole thing plays out, whatever it might be and I'd open it up to any of the witnesses that might like to speak on that. Thank you. Yeah, as I mentioned, Hezbollah's role right now in Syria is really as the shock troops for the Assad regime. I mean, they are very much leading on all major critical fronts. They were the ones who took the Al-Qusayr town. They have been deployed there for several weeks now. They have taken losses, though. Losses that they didn't expect and they're pretty much, the ratio is very high. So I think if they continue to be stretched this thing along other fronts in Syria, they may encounter problems. But the thing is, they have a state like Iran that's backing them with material and everything, whereas the other side is pretty much, they can put up a fight for a while but then they have to pull back. Okay, thank you. Yes? I'm curious whether anybody thinks that there's been any additional price imposed upon Hezbollah for the role that it's playing in Syria or whether there's been any additional price that's been imposed on Hezbollah for the escalation in the quality and quantity of armaments that have been transferred to them via Syria for use in Syria and for use on the Lebanese-Israeli border. I'm not aware of any effort to impose any additional meaningful sanctions. There have been some few on the edges, but that's it. There's a Hezbollah-backed government in Lebanon. We continue to provide assistance to Lebanon. Tony and I can probably fight this one out afterwards about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Nonetheless, nonetheless, these are options that remain for us. I sat here at this table and I said that Hezbollah was the best armed, most sophisticated, most dangerous terrorist group in the world. And I take that fully understanding the capabilities of al-Qaeda. And the truth is we don't take them seriously in any way. This is meaningful even if you couldn't give a darn about Syria, if you care about what's gonna happen in Iran, if you care about maintaining a military option. The fact that we are uninterested in defanging Iran's most important proxy that exists around the world and raises millions of dollars here in the United States every year is a problem. We need to do something about it. Thank you very much, Dr. Altman. If there's a small silver lining, it's that the more Hezbollah does things that are away from its core principles, the more Hezbollah weakens its legitimacy inside Lebanon, right? Hezbollah was used to fight other Lebanese that took them down a notch. Hezbollah is being used as the shock troops of Bashar al-Assad in Syria against Syrians. That's not what Hezbollah is supposed to be for. And I think that there is a possibility playing the diplomacy the right way to help use this episode to discredit Hezbollah in Lebanon, which could ultimately help to serve American interests. Thank you. If I would say instead of just discrediting, I would say to use this episode to help beat Hezbollah in Syria as well. Okay, thank you. And also on stability in Jordan. And King Abdullah was here recently. And what impact would you say this is having on his reign and reforms there and the rest? Dr. Altman? Jordan is under tremendous pressure. I think what I worry about is not Jordan this month, but Jordan for the next several years, dealing with another huge refugee population. I was talking to somebody yesterday who speculated that more than half the population of Jordan is now refugees of one kind or another. It is a horrible, not only financial problem, an intelligence problem, a law enforcement problem, an infrastructure problem. The Zatri refugee camp, which has somewhere between 120,000 and 170,000 residents, depending on who you're listening to. Jordanians tend to give larger numbers, but it's all electrified. I saw hardware stores with electric fans and all kinds of things, all the electricity's stolen. They have people who wire into the electrical grid and the camp had electricity shut off because there's a million dollar unpaid electrical bill. Well, the guys from the UN say we have to provide electricity or people will become totally unruly, but somebody has to pay the Jordanians for the electricity. It's just on the water and electrical problems, there's a huge pressure on the country in terms of employment, in terms of food, huge set of problems for Jordan. As I say, not this month, this is going to be going on for a while. Thank you. Madam Chair, Ms. Pletka, did you want to say something? It's the reason what John just outlined is the danger to the regime and to the government in Jordan, I think is something that isn't talked about often enough. We all look at, closer to the microphone, we all look at Syria in a vacuum, as if it's somehow an island on the moon. Consider the countries that are around Syria, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and maybe we don't care about what's happening in Syria. I do, but maybe we don't writ large. If you consider that the governments in each of these countries could be destabilized to the point of falling, that war could be taken to Israel, these are things that are going to embroil the United States whether we want it or not. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Shabbat. Mr. Connolly is recognized. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you to our panel. Mr. Badroun, you showed us a map. Were you implying or stating that we should understand from that map that the Assad regime has already conceded large swaths of territory and in the future intends to concentrate on that swath in red you showed us? I believe that if they could take the other parts back, they would. The thing is they have limits in their manpower and hardware that prevents them from doing so. However, what they've done with these other parts that have fallen out of their control is use scud missiles and their air power to deny their rise of an alternative government, which a lot of people, especially like Ambassador Frederick Hoffman says after leaving government, has advocated the no-fly zone option precisely so that we can start an alternative government in these areas. And in your view, were they to do what you suggest they're probably going to do and this morning's fall lent some credence to your theory, is it your view that they could make that viable? I think if they can consolidate in that area with the Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and Iranian personnel on the ground, Russian weapons system and chemical weapons, they can pretty much deter people from trying to storm it. And look at what the United States is offering them in return. A negotiated settlement that allows them to consolidate this ground, not firepower to the other side to be able to challenge it. Well, I listen to your testimony and I particularly listen to Ms. Pletka's testimony. You will forgive me, Ms. Pletka, but hearing you, I hear echoes of neocon arguments about Iraq a decade ago and I want to give you an opportunity, but you use phrases like we have done absolutely nothing. I beg to differ, the United States most clearly has done something in the Arab Spring with limited options, but it's hard to argue we did nothing in Libya. I know for a fact, having been there, that we've been pretty engaged in Egypt. I know that we've been supportive of the very values you extoll in Tunisia, but I would suggest one must not confuse the limited ability to influence events with therefore construing it as doing nothing. I wonder if you'd comment. I'm a big supporter of the Iraq War. This committee. I guessed that. You're very astute. I'm a big supporter of the Iraq War. I think the Iraqi people are pretty grateful to have been liberated, but I want to remind this committee and you, sir, of something that happened in 1991. At the encouragement of President George H. W. Bush, the Iraqi people rose up against Saddam Hussein. We had a choice before us at that moment. We could have supported them, and we never would have entered Iraq at all. We chose not to do so, and ultimately we went to war. Whether you like it or not, the fact is that we did go to war. Had we thought differently about it at the outset, perhaps things would have ended differently. I'm suggesting that on the question of Syria, we have a proxy military, people who are willing to fight and die in order to oust Bashar al-Assad, not American soldiers, not American men and women, we should be supporting those people. And it's very clear in your mind who those people are, and we can single them out, and we can disaggregate providing weapons to them from providing weapons to extremists and jihadists. Of course, I would always defer to the President and his officers in making those decisions, but certainly the CIA has suggested and is already vetting people on the ground, and they believe that that is a capability that they have. Does that mean that we can distinguish perfectly among them? Our track record isn't ideal, but I would also suggest to you that had we been a little bit more proactive at the outset, none of these groups would have been present on the ground. They entered into Syria when Syria spiraled out of control. A little bit of proactive thinking is a good policy for America. I thank you, and that proactive thinking has certainly arguably not paid off for us in Iraq either. You say people feel liberated well. There are lots of other much more complex aspects to our involvement in Iraq, and I'm not sure all of the outcomes that we see in Iraq are to our liking. Mr. Altman, did you want to comment? One of the very troubling things I find about Syria I think it's useful to remind the committee is not all Syrians want the end of the Assad regime. It's partly for Sakharin reasons, for class reasons, for many Syrians, especially the middle class and upper class in cities. They look at the rebels as vandals coming in and eating the organs of government troops on YouTube and all sorts of things. There is a part of this as we look toward a solution, that we don't have unanimity of the people that the regime has to go, and as we look at options, we have to take seriously the view that Syria remains a divided population, not a unified population rising up against the tyrant. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired. Mr. Chairman? The gentleman is unanimously receiving 30 additional seconds. I was simply going to concur with Mr. Altman that that's an important piece to this very complex puzzle. I can tell you in my own district, Syrian minorities have very mixed feelings about what's unfolding in Syria. It's not the mannequin world Ms. Pletka would have us see. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman's from Illinois. Mr. Kensinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just shocked by the last five minutes of what I've heard. So I guess evidently the new thing is when America stands up for oppressed minorities, when America stands up for freedom, when we see 80,000 innocent people murdered by a regime that is supported by Iran, the new argument is to say, well, if you support doing something, then you're an extension of neocon arguments. And this is somehow, I didn't hear anywhere in Ms. Pletka's testimony, which by the way, was to me an incredible five minutes of what we need to do. I heard nowhere in there, did you say that we should send 150,000 troops in? I heard nowhere in there, did you believe that, did you even compare that to any activity that we did in Iran, but yet being involved to stand for an oppressed minority or impressed people by a regime supported by Iran has now become a new neocon argument, shocking to me. And this is the bigger problem, the bigger problem is we've now accepted that since we went through a decade of war, part of which was brought on in Afghanistan by somebody that killed thousands of American people, innocent American people, since we're now a little fatigued, we can't do anything around the globe now, but retreat and not be involved. That's what I'm hearing, it's actually pretty scary to me. So I didn't intend to go off into that minute and a half, but let me, and first off, I would love for those who are saying that America is already very so involved in Syria, please tell that to our allies, because our allies have begged us to get involved in Syria. The Turks, other allies around the region have begged us to be involved. They say we need American leadership. So please, if you think we're already involved enough in Syria, tell them, because they need to hear that then. All right, there we go. Let me just say, I was actually a supporter of the president's policy in Libya, I was one of six Republicans to vote for it, because I believe that a strong United States is a stabilizing force around the globe, but I believe now we have two messages that are coming out of the administration. There's a message that's domestic, which says, hey, just trust us, we're actually doing something in Syria, but we can't really talk about it. And by the way, if we do anything, we can't control the outcome anyway. I mean, it's just, this is a fate of complete. And then again, there's the international message where the international community is bewildered, because for the first time in history, America has done absolutely nothing, really, in a big situation like this. My question is, and it was to Ms. Pletka's statement, I think one of the biggest issues, basically the last 10 years has almost been a proxy war to some level against Iran. Iran is the big issue in the area. What message, especially when it comes to the issue of denuclearization, that we're gonna be very concerned with, what message has the United States policy in Syria sent in a larger case to Iran? I wanna start with you, Ms. Pletka. I'll let the other two answer, but please keep it short, because I have a whole bunch of other stuff. I think I said in my statement, and thank you for defending the values that I think we should stand for, by the way. The message that we send to Iran is very clear, and the inference that the Iranians have drawn is very clear. The United States is not serious. We're not serious about our red lines. We're not serious about imposing our will, and that we will not, in fact, do what it takes to stop them from proceeding toward a nuclear weapon. And let me add to that. The red line situation, look, what should we do if chemical weapons are used? I'm not gonna advocate for one way or the other right now, but I will say, if you're the president of the United States and you ever, ever utter the word red line, I don't care if you're in the middle of a campaign, I don't care if you're in the middle of a crowded theater on fire, and the only way to evacuate it is to say the word red line. You never use that unless you intend to follow through because you are the president of the United States. And when you need to use a red line now, like in Iran, they're gonna laugh, and you actually make war much more likely when you give the impression that you're not gonna stand behind your word because your enemies don't take you seriously. Dr. Alterman, about the message we're sending to Iran right now. I think the Iranians are looking at a lot of things. They're looking at what we're doing in North Korea. They're looking at a whole series of issues. I think the Iranians, quite frankly, are looking at our budget situation. And I would argue that the greatest threat to our standing in the world is not an individual policy or two. It is the fact that we seem unable to make decisions about what our priorities are. We are unable to rebalance what our commitments are. And I would argue that members of, distinguished members of this committee and this House need to take seriously the fact that how we resource what we do in the world will determine what we can do in the world and what people think. And let me cut you off there. I agree with you. I don't disagree at all. Sorry, sir, I'm not gonna, I don't have enough time to give you an opportunity. But let me just say, we snatched, I'm worried that we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq. I'm worried that we're about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Afghanistan. And I look at this administration's policy in Syria and I wonder if we're about to make the same mistake. And I thank you and I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Schneider, is recognized for over five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Alterman, you refer to Syria as a hub state, critical to the entire region, its bordering countries. And as I've talked about this, I see it as a corkscrew. Whether we turn left or we turn right, we risk bringing all the states around it into the conflict. And Ms. Pletka, you talked about forces on the ground and I'm interested to know, are you aware of any of the states in the region that have forces on the ground, Ms. Pletka? Forgive me, I apologize. I was talking to my colleague and I thought you were directing a question to Mr. Alterman, forces on the ground? So I was talking about the hub states, Syria being a hub state in the region, are any of the bordering states to Syria, do they have currently forces on the ground? You said there were foreign troops on the ground. Yes, in fact, one of the most interesting and troubling things that we've seen, we, AEI together with the Institute for the Study of War, just put out a paper on Iranian activities in Syria. And one of the things that we saw is that the Iranians are not just arming and supporting or talking to people. I'm aware of the Iranian troops on the ground, I'm talking about our allies. Oh, our allies on the ground? There have been reports, there have been reports that we have special forces. I'm not, I can't confirm obviously, there are reports that there are other troops there covertly, even from the Gulf. I'm not aware of any, I haven't seen them on the ground. The point I wanted to make to you though that was very interesting is, and I hope you'll appreciate it, is that the Iranians don't just have IRGC on the ground. I understand, but you had said in your opening remarks that there are forces on the ground fighting, supporting the rebels. I'm not aware of that, and so I was asking. There are forces on the ground, I'm sorry. You said evidence of foreign troops? There are Iranians on the ground. But not foreign troops fighting the Assad regime. Oh, foreign troops fighting the Assad regime? There are certainly foreigners affiliated with al-Qaeda who have entered the country. Well, we've got al-Nusra, we've got al-Qaeda, we've got the rebels, and I guess, and I will turn to Dr. Forgive me for misunderstanding you. So, but as we look to the foreign troops coming in fighting the regime, they are not troops that we would look long term strategically to be allies of the United States or our allies in the region. No, those are the only ones who are being armed. Let me finish, please. As you advocate reaching out and arming those rebels who embrace democratic principles, what rebels are we talking about that embrace these democratic principles? Well, in fact, the Free Syrian Army embraces those democratic principles. Those are the forces on the ground with whom we have been working already, but we are not arming aggressively. Those are the forces who hold out some prospect for a better future for the Syrian people. They are not working with Jabhat al-Nusra. They have explicitly rejected working with Jabhat al-Nusra and with any other group that's where it's fealty to al-Qaeda. But what I've seen is that rebels are fighting each other as well, to your point, that the Free Syrian Army and al-Nusra are as much in conflict with each other as they are with the Assad regime. Long term, and this is to all the witnesses, to topple the Assad regime without a plan and then to have the rebels fighting each other, whether we arm the Free Syrian Army or not, if we put arms in, and then they then lose those arms to al-Nusra, the consequence to our allies is the same, isn't it? This is why, Congressman, I mentioned that we work with this two-pronged approach with Turkish intelligence, which has excellent intelligence penetration in the North and Jordanian and Saudi intelligence, which have excellent penetration in the South, to use them as the conduit to set up these local forces and therefore you can have an intelligence channel to these guys and you know who they are and you know how you deal with them. Second, sir, the sending arms isn't just sending any type of arms. Not everything can be found on the black market. There are certain things, there are certain very specific tactical systems that you can send for very specific tactical missions and you control the flow of ammo and that way you can mitigate against unwanted outcomes. Dr. Alterman. Is there a specific part of that question? Well, you talk about arming people to defend their homes, but the other conversation we heard before you was that we should arm the rebels. Yeah, we've seen this game before. I mean, when there are lots of weapons floating around, people have a temporary loyalty to us. They will tell us what they know we need to hear, what we want to hear, and then situations change and they've forgotten the loyalty. We used to arm Gulbadan Khatmatyar in Afghanistan. We fight Gulbadan Khatmatyar. We had stingers come out of Afghanistan. We had man-pads come out of Libya. I mean, we have seen this time and time and time again. So my time's limited, so I'm going to ask one quick question. Do you see a scenario where we can arm rebels that we won't see that scenario or is arming the rebels going to lead to the same story over again? It depends what we arm them with. Certainly if they're more rifles or smaller things, I'm less worried than large sophisticated systems that can harm infrastructure, airplanes, and those kinds of things. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Cotton, is recognized for five minutes. Thank you. Thank you all for your time and coming today and for your efforts that you've put into your testimony. I want to thank Ms. Pletka as well, in particular for her defense of freedom. I don't know if you consider yourself a neocon or not. I am quite sure that you're not a socialist who grew up in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s, which some of the historically limited knowledge colleagues of ours might not know as the original term for neoconservatives. I could call you a Reagan Republican or I could call you a Truman Democrat or a Kennedy Democrat, but I'll just let you define yourself as you choose. I'm worried that the two most likely outcomes in Syria right now are both highly unacceptable to the West and the United States, Assad remaining in power or a al-Nusra-led rebel front toppling Assad and taking power. Could we just go down the row and get your assessment of which one of those two is more likely and which one would be worse for U.S. and Western interests? Mr. Bodrin. Thank you so much. The idea of no good guys in Syria I think is unhelpful. In the past, the United States, in World War II, I am aware that there are good guys and I wish that we had supported the good guys earlier, but given the state of play right now. In terms of strategic prioritization, I think the defeat of Assad and all the structures of Iranian influence in Syria is the top priority. Then you develop another strategy to mitigate against whatever other undesirables that can emerge. I do believe that the inherent fissures in Syria's Sunni community, its regionalism and its internal divisions are going to mitigate against the ability of Nusra to take over in the sense that we consider it would. Is that assessment where the Gulf State stand, let's topple Syria, let's deal Iran a blow and we'll worry about what happens afterwards? Yes, sir. And I think that they also have their own channels not to Nusra. They have a multiple to the tribes, to a businessman and so on and so forth that I think to just sort of condense everything to Jabhat al-Nusra is misleading. Ms. Pletka, what's more likely, what's worse? First, Mr. Cotton, thank you. I'd like to refer to myself as an American. What's worse is clearly Assad's return to power. I think that the balance is tipped slightly toward him in the last few weeks and that's very worrisome. The problem is that I think that the premise that many bring to this is that somehow we can get back to status quo ante. Assad looks a lot better now that we see what the possible outcome is and the answer is there's never going to be another solid Syria under Assad, whether you liked it or not. We need to get rid of him and we need to have a follow on policy. It's that that worries me most frankly. We can talk a lot about arming, who to arm, whether we can vet, but what we do after Assad falls is going to be decisive. If we abdicate our responsibility, if we forget about places, as we've forgotten about parts of Libya frankly, then we end up with a situation in which bad guys control half the country and we cannot allow that to happen. Dr. Alterman. I think there's a possibility of some sort of midpoint where Assad has control over part of the country, other forces have control over another part of the country. We try to make the other parts of the country successful. I think the key to me is not thinking about this as a moment of decision, not thinking about this as the point in which we decide whether this is won or lost, but the changes in the Arab world are going to take more than a decade to work themselves out. The changes in Syria are going to take themselves more than a decade to work out. I think we have to take a more incremental approach, preserving our interests, trying to keep radicals from seizing more control, putting ourselves in a better position so that when changes continue to work through the Arab world, we can continue to try to use them to an advantage to further American values, American interests and, very importantly, the interests of the very vulnerable neighbors who are all allies of the United States. Thank you. Ms. Platka, I want to discuss now an op-ed that you and General Keene have written about a no-fly zone. Most people, when they think about a no-fly zone, think about what we had in Iraq in the 1990s or elsewhere where aircraft are fighting aircraft if they're in the air. There's also effective ways to make a no-fly zone, for example, destroying airfields or support facilities. Can you estimate how many airfields Syria has today? Not a precise number, but are we talking dozens, scores, hundreds? I think the total is 25 or so, but a lot of them are decommissioned, a lot of them are outside the control of the Assad regime. There's 25 airfields in all of Syria. Between civilian and military, approximately around that number, but a lot of them are in the east and the north of the country. They've fallen outside the regime's control or have been decommissioned even in the past. And so 25, even if I'll say it was 50, that's both airfields that Syria's fixed-wing aircraft are up to use, but also any fixed-wing aircraft coming in from Iran for resupply as well. As well as Russia. As well as Russia. And can you estimate if it would take the United States military with our NATO allies minutes or hours to destroy those airfields? I never want to put myself forward as a military expert. You of all people should know, but I'm not one. General Keane, working with him and discussing this with people who've done serious analysis, believe that this is a matter of, that this is an operation that would certainly not take more than days, but we need to underscore that the Syrians will be able to repair these airfields. This is something we will need to keep at. If we make a commitment, we will need to keep at it. It won't be cost-free, and we do have the best capabilities in the region. Yes, the Arab League should join us. Yes, NATO, especially Turkey, should join us. At the end of the day, however, we do still, at this moment, have the best capability. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank you all for your time and your insights. The gentleman from California, Mr. Vargas, has recognized five minutes. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak and also want to thank people who are testifying today. When I think of the region, I do think of a good guy. I think of Israel. They're good guys. They have our values. They're great allies. Are you okay? And I do see them as good guys, but I imagine I'm, like most Americans, listening to the discussion here, trying to find the good guys here. I mean, you find the victims, you find the people who are being killed, the internally displaced people, the refugees, but then it just seems like all bad guys. I mean, the other guys just don't, I mean, these are the guys that seem like you are, and they're gonna turn around and use the weapons against the good guys in the region. And that's my concern. I mean, I've been trying to pick sides here and done a lot of reading, and they all seem like pretty bad guys to me. So how do we pick? I mean, who do we want to end up there? I mean, you wanna deal a blow to Iran and Hezbollah, and I think that that's great, but then who do you end up with? You end up with people that are gonna start lobbing bombs into Israel. I mean, who do you end up with? Sir, you asked a very hard question, it's not one that any of us will be able to answer to your complete satisfaction. You know, in World War II, we worked with Stalin's Soviet Union to defeat the Nazis. I can assure you that Stalin was not a nice man for those who have forgotten, and these are the choices that face us in the Middle East as well. You're right, there's only one good guy. Israel is a good guy and it has many, many enemies, and if we're a friend to Israel, we won't abandon them to the predations of the countries around them and say, you know what, I can't decide who's a better guy and who's a worse guy, I'm just gonna let them all kill each other and hope for the best. We have an opportunity to help, not to resolve an outcome, but to help to secure a better outcome that will help our ally Israel. It's gonna be a difficult decision. I think that the Israelis themselves have given us a very important indication as to how they calculate the situation. They have made three incursions in Syria strikes. They're all have been against Iranian targets because the way, I was recently there and an official there told me that the way they prioritize this threat is Iran is the existential threat, as well as a strategic threat, and whatever Islamist groups that may emerge in Syria are a tactical threat. The Israel's number one priority is to prevent Iran from deploying a strategic weapons system on its borders. And now Syria, by becoming an IRGC base, in addition to Hezbollah, armed with Russian strategic weapons is gonna be precisely the outcome that Israel has been striving to prevent. Mr. Alterman, Dr. Alterman. Thank you. One of the problems with these long-ranging military insurgencies is the people who tend to win at the end or the people who fought the most and the people who fought the most are not the nice guys, they're not Democrats. They think that they've won their spoils and now it's time to rule. I think one of the certainly daunting prospects is that you have a future government in Syria which does not have the experience of having been deterred by the Israelis the way the Assad government has because for all the Assad government shoots its mouth off about Israel. The fact is the Assad government knows exactly what Israeli capabilities are and is very cautious about challenging Israel. And I think one of the things we have to consider is the possibility that a future government of Syria would have to be re-deterred by the Israelis. That's not a reason to not hope for a different government in Syria. That I think is one of the reasons why we might want a more extended process of transition of power. But certainly, I mean when you talk to Israeli military intelligence people as I have they are not euphoric about the fall of the person who tries to portray himself as Israel's greatest foe in the region because he's a foe that they're not particularly worried about. Thank you very much for speaking out of school. We heard something very similar very recently also that in fact Syria doesn't seem to be much of a threat to Israel as it is today but the threat could come about. But thank you again. But I guess I'm like most Americans. It's hard to keep score on this one. You know, it's hard to keep score when everyone's the bad guy on one side and you got a great guy and friend on the other sides. How do you protect that friend? And I guess that's what I'm looking for. And again, Israel being that great friend. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Vargas. Mr. Weber of Texas. Thank you. Got five minutes, I'm gonna give my time to y'all. Three things that America can do to change this. Prioritizing for me. Mr. Modern, start. I think the first thing that we should do is to take out the supply lines that the Iranians are bringing to the regime because that's really the core of his ability to continue this war. That means the airfields, specifically Damascus Airport being a priority. Once you take those things out, work with the Turkish and Jordanian intelligence and Saudi intelligence in Jordan to start working with the local groups on their borders and start making incremental assaults to deny the ability of the regime to consolidate itself in a little IRGC base in Western Syria. That was two, that was take out the supply lines, work with the Turks, Jordanians and Saudis, you got one more. And make sure that we state openly that the idea of a managed political transition is a fantasy. That this thing is not going to end until the regime is out. Okay. Ms. Bletchum. Both John and Sherwin Ross-Ladon said that there has to be a political solution. And I agree, there does have to be at the end of this. Finally, some political solution. No one is going to be amenable to a political solution. You said we needed to vet, let me just give you a little bit of emphasis, to vet pro-American forces, how do you do that? Well, first of all, you're not going to get rid of bad guys unless the other side thinks they're winning. So I do think we need to pick winners. And I'm a big believer. How do we vet them? That's the job of the CIA and our special forces. That's what they're supposedly doing on the ground. That's what they've told the Congress that they're capable of doing. Pick the least onerous. Point number two. We need to impose costs on those who are aiding and abetting bad guys. Get world opinion to work against Iran. Iran, Russia. Okay. Qatar. Point number three. We need to have a policy. We need to have an actual policy that desires an outcome. Have you applied at the White House? I haven't, and I suspect I'm ineligible in their eyes. But having a policy and seeing it through, not just for now, but for post-Assad and for the region will be very important. Okay. Dr. Alderman, thank you. Very quickly, I think we have to pay an awful lot of attention to our allies. Both protecting our good allies, making sure other allies are not undermining us. Second, we have to be attendant to the jihadi threat in Syria. That could be with us for years and years and years to come. It could affect a whole range of allies from Europe and Asia and beyond. Third, we have to be focused on Iran, but not overthink the issue on Iran. One of the problems that we have fighting Iran in this scope is that in many ways, this is their home turf because they are used to fighting asymmetrically. And we are used to fighting symmetrically. And we have to be more creative about limiting Iranian influence, Iranian efforts to disrupt. And in many ways, this is where they feel they have a comparative advantage. We have to deny the comparative advantage. Do you think that the Iranians are a credible, serious threat to Israel's continued existence? I think the Iranians are a potential threat to Israel's existence. They are not currently a likely threat. And it's unclear how that might unfold, but Israel has, in terms of conventional forces, in terms of unconventional forces, Iran is a relatively weak country that can create loss of mischief. And we have to be sure we don't make Iran into something it's not because actually that makes it easier for the Iranians to succeed because even when they get a tiny victory, they can't even do it. I'm running out of time. One minute. So without Iranian support, does the Assad regime stay atop the government in Syria? I think with Russian support, maybe enough. No, without Iranian support. Without Iranian support provided there's continued Russian support, I suspect that because of Russian help in the UN preventing international action and Russian weapons and money, I think they probably could. So Assad stays in power without Iranian support in your opinion? If they just would, completely withdrew support? I don't think so. Okay, in my judgment, Russian support is necessary. And then earlier you said in your comments that this is a scenario that will play out in 10 years. Right? What do you mean by that? You get 15 seconds. I don't have 10 years. This is not about a single battle. You think he stays in power 10 more years? I'm not sure he stays in power. I think there will be elements of the regime that will have large influence in Syria probably for a minute. Divided country? Certainly de facto, if not de jure. Okay. You have made excellent points in those five minutes and got great answers. Thank you. Mr. Higgins of New York. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just say that I think it's a fair question to raise that is Syria the way it is because Assad is the way he is? Or is Assad the way he is because Syria is the way it is? And Syria clearly contains a volatile mix of ethnic groups and sects. And the best we could hope for in any American military intervention is to provide, as we did in the letter stages of Iraq, provide a breathing space from which the various factions within these countries, Bedarac, be it Syria, can reconcile politically, and form some kind of functioning government toward a constitution and toward some kind of civil existence. And I would say that in Egypt on January 25th, 2011, an 18-day protest that was very organic was lodged against a brutal dictator in Egypt. The greatest influence in that was a retired English professor living in his apartment in North Boston, Massachusetts, by the name of Eugene Sharp. He wrote a book 20 years ago called From Dictator Ship to Democracy. And because the power of the internet and the two most powerful forces in the Middle East today are youth and technology, that book was taken, translated into 20 different languages, including Arabic. And in the last days of the protests in Terare Square, 8 million people were on the streets of Egypt, the largest pro-democracy demonstration in the history of the world. And I think there's a lot of emphasis today at this hearing, which I think is disappointing, about whether or not we should intervene militarily. I think that smart power is needed, I think strong diplomacy is needed, meaningful sanctions are needed, and the exportation, the exportation of the American idea. And that is based on a strong prosperous America that takes care of its own people, because the internet and social media today are used not only effectively for organizational purposes in places where demonstrations could never take place before, but because of these great tools of collaboration we have, they can now, but also, also, in addition to organizational purposes, aspirational purposes, because the young people in that part of the world see how Westerners live, they want the same freedoms that we enjoy for our people. Ms. Plutka, you had said that the U.S. has done nothing. $2 trillion out of the American economy, $160 billion in interest payments, because, of course, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were deficit finance, that's not nothing. 2,235 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, 4,486 U.S. casualties in Iraq, that's not nothing. It's very, very important to remember here. The United States does, in fact, have a role. The humanitarian disasters that are taking place in that part of the world, collectively and individually, are of a great concern to us. And as a government, as a country, I think we're doing a lot, but there always is, there always is limitations to a superpower and what it is we can impose on a certain people. There has to be a balance between what we can do to help them achieve what they want and what they truly want for themselves. And as I said at the outset, this is really not about the good guys and the bad guys. These are about a lot of people that whose motivations are highly questionable and what these places will become, not tomorrow or next year, but in the next five to 10 years as well. I'll yield back. Thank you, Mr. Higgins. We'll now turn to Mr. Yoho, Florida. He's recognized for five minutes. Thank you, David. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your input here today. It has been interesting to hear talks on both sides here and I agree with both of them. Mr. Connolly talking about our interference as Neocon and I heard Mr. Kinzinger, I agree with him too. Dr. Altman, I'd like to start with you because you were talking about our willingness to intervene is unclear and it's because of our policies and what policies we should pursue and that we have created a paper tiger and I agree with you, Ms. Pletka. But I think the reasons that we have this kind of confusion is because we're not following this book here and this book is the Constitution of the United States of America and I don't believe anywhere in there it says about foreign intervention and I believe our founding fathers said honest and open trade and commerce with all nations, honest and true friendship with all nations, intermingling with none and unfortunately our policies of the last 50 to 100 years have gotten away from this and Ms. Pletka, you kind of scare me in your willingness to say that we just need to do a flyover. We did that in Libya. Libya didn't have an advanced air force. Syria has a more advanced air force backed by the Russian army and I look around this room and I see these young men and women in here and for us to do that, can you guarantee me that it won't open up to an all-out war with Iran and Russia involved, maybe China, to bring in other people into this conflict because I would like for you to come to the house chambers after we get done voting and look at the young men and women there that are the wounded warriors that have gone to Afghanistan and have gone to Iraq. And you say we've done nothing and I agree with the gentleman down here. America's paid a heck of a price for the conflicts we've had and yet you talk about the freedom and liberation in Iraq but yet we have to fight for our airspace over Iraq but Iran can fly over Iraq and we've paid a serious price and I think our interventionist policies have been a dangerous thing and what I'm hearing is the same thing and I've asked you to discuss things outside of the box and I think as the gentleman talked about building and sending information about freedoms and the ideals of America are the things we need to talk about but it scares me to think that we just take it flippantly to say we'll just do a flyover because if somebody did that to this country and did a flyover, I think we would all view this as an act of aggression if not an act of war. Are we not doing the same thing over there? And I'd just like to hear you guys' thoughts because I don't like the solutions I'm hearing here and that we're gonna have to vote on some appropriations down the road. So I look forward to hearing what you have to say. If I may go first. I believe our Constitution was written by people who believed in the principles that animate our country and that they believe that those principles were not simply for Americans alone and that we have something to stand for in this world and that we do right by standing by it. So I think that if our founders were sitting here today, they would agree. You may disagree with that, but I realize that and you made that very clear. Second of all, yes, I think I can guarantee to you that if we create a no fly zone or arm the rebels in Syria that we will not be involved in a regional war with Iran, China and Russia. I think I'm willing to go out on that limb there, yes. As far as our wounded soldiers, I wanna defer to Mr. Cotton who fought in Iraq and I think can speak for the people who he saw on the ground there. He knows much better than I do how our men and women in uniform feel about defending the values and principles that bring us all here today. Dr. Altman. Sure. I agree that the Constitution as the animate is Constitution, of course, provides for Congress to declare war. And sometimes we do have to fight wars. As I suggested, I don't think this is a time when we should be fighting a war. So I think that we are in agreement there. I wish that this were a simple matter of providing some pamphlets and books to a civil uprising that would end an odious regime. I don't think we're there. We may have been there two years ago. I don't think we're at that point now. I don't think it would work. My reading of what happened in Egypt is not simply that some people read Jean Sharp and inspired them and the regime fell. I think what happened was the military made a decision. It was the military that decided Hassan Mubarak was gone. And one of the things that has puzzled me quite frankly, and that I was wrong about when I testified about Syria before the Senate a year ago, is that the military hasn't risen up against Bashar al-Assad. The government has not split despite overwhelming pressure. But the idea that we can simply get a mass movement and get a dictator with blood on his hands to step down is, I think, a sadly wishful thinking. My time's expired. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Joho. We will now turn to Mr. Cicillin for five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna begin by saying that I'm disappointed in the title of this hearing, because I think it does a serious injustice to the seriousness of this question and the particularly complicated nature of this civil war in Syria. And of course, from listening to some of the discussion this morning, you might think this is a choice between being fully engaged in civil war in Syria, which entails you to describe yourself as a patriot and as an American and someone who cherishes American values versus people who are weak, interested in retreat and undermining American values. Of course, that is not the question. This is a complicated question about a very difficult region of the world and the best way that the United States can both protect our national security interests and honor our values as a nation. The question is whether the United States should make considerable financial investments and investments of U.S. military personnel to advance the national security interests of the United States over an indefinite period of time at the same time that we're drawing down from our involvement in Afghanistan and earlier from Iraq. These are hard and complicated questions. And I must say that I was equally disappointed to hear Ms. Pletka say that we've done nothing in response to authoritarian rule or anti-democratic actions. We have just spent over $100 billion after more than a decade of war, lost thousands of American heroes. I have had the honor of meeting families who have lost loved ones in those conflicts, thousands, tens of thousands of Americans who have been maimed by war. And I have my own view on both the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is no question our brave men and women were told the same things. They were defending American values. And I think the notion that America has done nothing to vindicate those values does great offense to the families who have been impacted by those conflicts. The administration in the response to the civil war in Syria began first by denouncing the regime, expanding US sanctions against government officials, insisting that the Assad government embrace reform, ultimately, as the repression continued, called for Assad's resignation, has been working in a multilateral way in the UN to sanction the regime, to reach a ceasefire, to endorse a political transition plan, to expand humanitarian and refugee assistance, and to providing limited non-lethal assistance to the opposition. And so I think the question is, what more should the US do, or can do, that will effectively protect the national security interests of the United States and help bring stability to that region of the world? And I had hoped we would spend time on that rather than challenging each other about who's really a patriot and who's really an American. So what I'd like you to focus on specifically is the suggestion, your first suggestion, Miss Blakka, was to vet and arm the rebels, which seems like would be a sensible thing to do. We could just, the world was so simple, we could pick out the good guys and bad guys and cheer the good guys on and give them tools to win. The most recent report I've seen, which was May 13th in an article in The Washington Post, reported that there were a few hundred armed groups currently fighting in Syria. And so my first question really is, is arming the resistance, vetting them as you say, practical? And it's not enough to simply say, oh, the CIA can do that. I'm asking this panel, whether or not that is a sensible policy to pursue. Do we have the ability to actually vet several hundred armed groups, and then even if we are able to do that, do we have the capacity to provide enough resources so that they prevail, and then after they prevail to ensure that they remain in a post-Syria government? Because without those assurances, we are back to the same question of, do we simply invest additional American resources, additional or potentially American personnel without any reasonable assurance that will be successful at the end? And I apologize, I don't have 45 seconds, but do your best. I'd like to answer your question about vetting, and I know my colleagues would as well, but I do want to take issue with something you said about something I said. First of all, when I said we've done nothing, I was referring to Syria, not referring to tyranny and dictatorship, and while I didn't interrupt or correct any of the previous members who suggested that I had made that statement, I think it's time that I do so now, because I made no such statement, and I resent the implication that I did. So there we start. On vetting, absolutely. The choices we either don't arm the rebels and do nothing, in other words, we don't support a proxy that wishes to overthrow Assad, a goal that the president has articulated for himself. Okay, we don't have to do that, or we arm the rebels. If we want to arm the rebels, I would suggest that it's important that we figure out who they are. I do believe it's within our capacity. I trust the CIA when they say they can do it. We should have done it when we armed the rebels in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and I believe we can do it now. I think this is why I mentioned having this two-pronged approach, working with regional allies to do that, to help us do that, and I don't think that's necessarily gonna be a major sort of costly operation on the one hand. And on the other hand, I mean, what kind of weapons are we talking about? We're talking about a very specific, there has to be an integrated mission here, and this is something where we tell them that these are the very specific weapons they're gonna get for very specific missions towards squeezing the regime out of the areas that they're operating in, in the north and in the south, while, for instance, targeted strikes on the ports of entry of resupplies for the regime from the Iranians will diminish its ability to continue fighting, and it becomes an incremental policy towards that end, so it's without much resource commitment at all, as a matter of fact. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right, thank you. Mr. Alderman, did you want a brief time to respond to that? Oh. Okay, thank you. We will now turn to Congresswoman Frankel from Florida for five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the panel. I had the privilege of joining Mr. Joe Wilson in past week and some of my colleagues on a codelle that where we went to a few countries, but one of the stops we made were at the Combined Air Operations Center in Doha, and one of the opportunities I had was they took us to an area where they had a screen where we were told where there was a tracking of the missiles being fired within Syria every single day. I mean, lots. And one of the things that was most concerning was how close that they would be coming, for example, to Turkey. So my question is to you is what do you, and I think you might have touched on this before, but what do you think is the risk of the conflict, which is now, we consider a civil conflict, expanding to Turkey or Jordan, which might cause the United States more pressure to be involved in the conflict? I mean, the Turks have suffered, as you mentioned, not just these kind of shellings, but also terror operations in Turkey, sponsored by assets of the asset regime that are operating in Turkey as well. But it's not just a civil conflict anymore. When you have Hezbollah leading the fight on the ground for the, on behalf of the regime, with pro-Iranian Shia militia from Iraq, for instance, this is no longer a civil conflict. I mean, this is a foreign state that is coming to defend its strategic interest in Syria. So the question is not just whether this is going to spill over, let's say, into the neighboring countries, which potentially it could happen. I'm not sure if it's going to escalate to the extent that's being suggested, but the problem is that if you leave the Iranians to win at the end of the day, then what is going to be the repercussion on all our allies that are around Syria? What will be Turkey's position then? What will be Jordan's position then? What will be Israel's position then when you have an IRGC-controlled base on the Mediterranean in possession of strategic Russian weapons system, for instance? I mean, we talk a lot about weapons not falling into the wrong hands of the rebels, and we're talking about RPGs and really tactical weapons. Here we're talking about strategic weapons system, and are we suggesting that the Assad regime and the IRGC are the right hands? I don't think that's right. We've already seen fighting spilling over into Lebanon. We've seen violence in Turkey. I think there are two ways in which this violence could spread. One is that either regime elements or elements friendly to the regime carry out attacks against people fighting the regime across borders. As I say, we've seen that in Lebanon. We've seen that against at least civilian targets in Turkey. The other possibility is that foreign fighters who have networked and trained in Syria go back to their homes of origin and continue a jihad against whatever target, and that could affect a whole range of countries not necessarily bordering, but it may affect most the country's bordering Syria, and either one of those events would be tremendously destabilizing, polarizing, and for especially, I think, the most vulnerable and small countries, Lebanon and Jordan, over the next five to 10 years, that could prove to be an existential threat. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. DeSantis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the witnesses. I really appreciate you guys coming. Just as kind of a way of background, just so I can put what you've said in context, can you just tell me real quick, and I'm going to insist on some quick answers, Egypt, do you think that Egypt is better off today than under Mubarak? Do you think that Egypt is better in terms of our strategic interests in the region and in terms of Israel's security? Start with you, Mr. Bajr and go down. I think Egypt's problems would have been just as terrible had it been under Mubarak or now, because they are in a terrible economic situation that I don't think either administration could have solved. But I do think in terms of the strategic positioning of Egypt, I don't think much has changed, to be perfectly honest with you. So the idea of the liberties of the Egyptian people, domestically, how have these things changed for the Egyptians? I'm not so sure. I mean, I think there's much more robust participation now. What about Islamist influence in the government, greater or less than under Mubarak, do you think? No, clearly greater, of course. Okay, and Ms. Pletka? I think the Islamists have more influence as well. Do I think it's better for the United States? I think ultimately it probably will be better for the United States, but I think right now we're facing a very difficult situation in Egypt. Internal problems, as Tony suggested, and also growing problems in ungoverned areas of Egypt that are going to have implications for Egypt's neighbors. Camp David Accords, more secure, less secure? The Camp David Accords remain secure in my estimation. Okay. Doctor? I think Egypt is in probably the worst condition now that it's been in its modern history. The question is whether it can use this to bounce into a more resilient place. And I think the jury is out. I certainly have been troubled by many of the things that the government has done, but I don't think the game is over in Egypt. And I don't necessarily think so either. I don't mean to cut you off, and then just basically kind of same thing about Libya. You look in after Gaddafi fell, a lot of these weapons have gone with Islamic fighters. There's a lot of jihadism in North Africa. And I guess, is North Africa a safer place now that Gaddafi's gone or not? Because I'm concerned with what I've seen there. Whoever wants to take it. Thank you both for throwing me under the bus on that. You remember what Gaddafi did, Pan Am 103, okay? So Gaddafi was not a nice man. The arms that have been in Libya have absolutely traveled outside of Libya. And I think a big part of the problem is that the United States sees the conflict as an isolated incident that doesn't require further management. Would we have been able to stop it? I'm not certain we would have. On the other hand, I think we need to remember that Gaddafi was a very destabilizing influence in Africa, spent a lot of time working to destabilize other countries and to support and money, absolutely, to destabilize other countries. And right now what we see is that there is a more democratic government in Libya, but they do not fully control all of the territory of Libya. And that remains a threat to the region and to us. Anyone else on that? Okay, well, I appreciate that. So I guess a lot of people would look at Syria and would say, well, obviously Assad is not somebody who we like, Hezbollah, Iran. You guys articulated that well, the problem's there. But on the other side, you see a lot of Sunni supremacist fighters, a lot of Islamist fighters, foreign fighters. You mentioned the foreign fighters coming in to support Assad. There are also foreign fighters coming in to support the other side and to wage jihad. These are people who are fighting us in Iraq. And so I guess people look at that and say, why do we want to referee that? Neither of those outcomes would be good if either of those, one of those sides were to ultimately win. They're basically fighting each other and weakening each other. Why would we want to then go in and then become kind of the focus of them? Because I think most of them are not going to be pro-American, even the people who are not as Islamist. They may want our aid now, but the idea that they're going to be pro-American, I mean, I'm certainly not convinced of that. So what would you say to that kind of that argument? First, I'd just reinforce your point. The French estimate is perhaps 400 French citizens fighting in Syria right now. It's terrifying if you're a French security person thinking about security of France into the future, especially a few weeks after two bloody attacks in London and Paris on a military personnel. I think that's not to say though that we have no stake in how these battles are resolved. I understand there are evil forces on both sides. There are not all evil forces. And I think what we have to do is find a way consistent with our interests and our resources to try to influence these movements in positive ways. They are not all negative on the rebel side. I think there may be some people affiliated with the regime who we may be able to work with. And the question is whether we can over time work towards some better place, which is less threatening to us, the immediate allies and even more broadly our allies in Europe and Asia and elsewhere and ultimately at home as well. My time has expired, so thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. DeSantis. We will now move to Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank each one of you for being here on this critical topic. And I want to give a little bit of opportunity, I guess for a few of you to expand on some of the things that we've already talked about. One of those being the arming of rebels and specifically how do you think, what is the best way for us to identify those rebels that would not have extremist views? And how do we come about that? And I know that that's a complex question. It's not something that's easily answered. This is a complex situation. What's the best way for us to do that? And as members of Congress or the administration or the State Department, whomever, how do we give the tools to make sure that that gets done properly? So you threw him under the bus? No, I'm very happy to take this one, that's fine. The United States has been sending non-lethal aid, right? And some of it has some military function. So if we are capable of vetting people that we're sending that type of assistance who I think we can look to other groups that we can send tactical weapons to. And it's important here to also remember that we're not talking here about scud missiles or nuclear, we're talking about tactical weaponrys, recoil rifles, rocket launchers, mortars, very basic things to achieve. So things that can't come back against us in a real and powerful way? I don't think it alters the balance of power in the region in any way. But also I mentioned in my testimony that we should harness sort of the resources of allies in the region who have very close working relationship with some of these groups, be they the Turks, be they the Jordanians, be they the Saudis, be they the Qataris. And then you can look. But the idea that we cannot give weapons to any Islamists of any shade is unrealistic, I think. There are various Islamists. Some of them are of one shade, one another. Some of them are Islamists and are fighting Jabhat al-Nusrah, for instance. They're also Islamists, but more, you know, the al-Qaeda end of the spectrum. So I think that shouldn't be a constraint. We should acknowledge that there are people, this is a sectarian war. A lot of people take on the religious identity precisely because of the nature of the fight, especially when they see an onslaught of sectarianism from the other side, from the Iranians, purely Shiite sectarian force that's fighting them. So we have to take all of this into consideration, I think. I think I fully agree with how Tony led that out and I think it's very astute. You're right, and all the other members who have suggested that there are no angels fighting in Syria, they're all right. But despite the fact that there are no angels, there will be an outcome. And somebody will prevail. There may be a long-term low-intensity conflict, but somebody will come out on top. There will ultimately be a government, and we do have an interest in trying to ensure that the better among them do this. As for vetting, I think a number of members have fixated on this idea, and while none of us should downplay the notion that we will be lied to, people do absolutely don the mantle of pro-Westernism or secularism when they are neither. On the other hand, we do this everywhere. We give billions of dollars to Egypt. We need to vet who that goes to. We give millions of dollars, tens of millions, and have given billions to Lebanon. We make sure that they do not go to the many terrorist groups that are part of the Lebanese government. We do that everywhere. We do it in Russia. We do it everywhere in the Middle East, and it's a job for a million. So how effective do you think we are at that? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most effective, are we a 7 or an 8? Where are we on that? I think we're a 5. Okay. So we're missing it half the time. We're not great at it, and it's hard, and it's challenging, and we don't have a lot of people. We need to work with allies on the ground for their help. They're going to know better. The point here is this is a binary sort. We either do something or we don't do something. And I'm running out of time. So let me finish with this last question, because we had in this very room Ambassador Sherman here and talking about a number of things as it deals with Iran. We've talked a little bit about Russia and Iran and that play. Can the role of sanctions ramping up those sanctions on Iran play a more critical role on the influence of Iran in Syria with regards to their support? And I guess, unfortunately, I don't think the sanctions have deterred Iran from putting in all its weight in Syria. I mean, they have been sending... Now I guess my question is, can we, if we ramp it up, do you think it will? I think definitely anything that hurts the Iranians is good, but I think also we have to think a little bit outside that box and look on the battlefield in Syria. If the Iranians are playing the asymmetric game, let's play the asymmetric game. There are assets on the ground that we can use. I mean, Hezbollah was dealt a very severe blow in Syria. It sustained a really serious casualty rate. Why not help the rebels to defeat what we consider the number one terrorist group in the world? Okay, I think the cheer is indulgence and with that I'll yield back. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Meadows. And that concludes this hearing of the subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. We are adjourned.