US may send weapons for Iran and Kurds to fight ISIS

The US is worried that ISIS will become so powerful it will take over control of a capital city and demand international recognition, Al-Quds newspaper reported experts saying yesterday.

If this happened, the US and other countries would face “difficult choices”, Michael O’Hanlon, a specialist in national security and defence policy in Brookings Institute, told Al-Quds.

Experts said that an American deployment of forces would not achieve a full victory. “American forces in Iraq and Syria are gifts for ISIS, which has been trying to drag the US into the region for a long time,” experts said.

Most experts said that new American ground involvement in the region would just repeat the “disaster” which took place following the Iraq invasion.

At the same time, the US is uncertain regarding taking a decision to choose between Syrian President Bashar Assad and ISIS. “It cannot choose Assad because he is slaughtering his people, but choosing ISIS would make the Assad regime lament because ISIS would carry out genocides,” the experts said.

They said the two choices for the US are: gathering Arab ground troops to fight ISIS in the long term while Washington intensifies “effective” airstrikes, or supplying weapons for the Kurds and Iranians to fight ISIS.

However, these are difficult choice because aiding the Kurds would intimidate Iraq and aiding Iran would intimidate Saudi and both countries are US partners in the war on terrorism.