WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Monday discussed whether the Assad regime’s rapid military advance across the heart of Syria necessitates a drastic US response, with officials saying a decision on arming beleaguered rebels could happen later this week.
Top aides from the State and Defense Departments, the CIA, and other agencies gathered for a ‘‘deputies meeting’’ at the White House. They were seeking to lay the groundwork for a meeting that President Obama will hold with his senior national security staff, planned for Wednesday, said US officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the closed-doors talks.
In addition to discussing arms for the rebels, the president and his advisers will consider the merits of a less likely move to send in US airpower to enforce a no-fly zone over the civil war-wracked nation, officials said.
The White House meetings are taking place as President Bashar Assad’s government forces are apparently poised for an attack on the key city of Homs, which could cut off Syria’s armed opposition from the south of the country.
As many as 5,000 Hezbollah fighters are now in Syria, officials believe, helping the regime press on with its campaign after capturing the town of Qusair near the Lebanese border last week.
Syrian rebels battled Monday in a renewed push to capture a government air base in the north, while the regime was said to be preparing for a major offensive to retake opposition-held areas in the province of Aleppo.
Rebels captured a building inside the large base in Mannagh, near Turkey. The opposition’s Aleppo media center said rebels destroyed several army vehicles and captured the observation tower at the base, which has been under siege for months.
Aleppo-based activist Mohammed al-Khatib said military reinforcements, including Hezbollah fighters, have been sent to parts of Aleppo, including the two Shi’ite villages and northwestern parts of the city. He said the government was using helicopters to reinforce its positions and resupply in those areas.
Opposition leaders have warned Washington that their rebellion could face devastating and irreversible losses without greater support.
Secretary of State John Kerry postponed a planned trip Monday to the Mideast to participate in White House discussions, officials said. He may travel to the region later in the week. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday internal administration discussions were focused on ‘‘helping the Syrian opposition serve the essential needs of the Syrian people and hasten a political transition.’’
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama’s Syria policy was under constant review to find ‘‘what policy tools will help achieve our goal, which is a transition in Syria to a post-Assad government that respects the rights of the Syrian people and that gives that country a chance for a better future, a democratic future, and an economically prosperous future.’’
While nothing has been concretely decided, US officials said, Obama was leaning closer toward signing off on sending weapons to vetted, moderate rebel units. The United States has spoken of possibly arming the opposition in recent months but has hesitated because it doesn’t want groups that are linked to Al Qaeda and other extremists fighting alongside the anti-Assad militias to end up with the weapons.
Obama already has ruled out any intervention that would require US troops on the ground. Other options such as deploying American air power to ground the regime’s jets, gunships, and other aerial assets are being more seriously debated, officials said, but they cautioned that a no-fly zone or any other action involving US military deployments in Syria were far less likely right now.
The United States can provide weapons without sending soldiers into Syria, either by sending materiel to rebels in neighboring Turkey and Jordan or working with regional allies.
The president has declared chemical weapons use by the Assad regime a ‘‘red line’’ for more forceful US action. American allies including France and Britain have said they’ve determined with near certitude that Syrian forces have used low levels of sarin in several attacks, but the administration is still studying the evidence.
The US officials said this week’s meetings concern the deteriorating situation on the ground in Syria, independent of final confirmation of possible chemical weapons use.
US lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, are clamoring for greater action. In a letter to Obama on Monday, Bob Corker of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the president to start providing lethal aid as soon as possible to ‘‘shift momentum away from radical Islamist groups, the Assad regime, and its militias toward more moderate elements.’’
But Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the United States should not get drawn into the conflict. ‘‘We have a poor track record of intervening in sectarian civil wars,’’ he said. ‘‘We need to be mindful of limitations in our ability to shape the outcome and very resistant to being pulled in in a way that we cannot later extricate ourselves very easily.’’
Any intervention could have wide-reaching ramifications for the United States and the region. It would bring the United States closer to a conflict that has killed almost 80,000 people since Assad cracked down on protesters inspired by the Arab Spring in March 2011 and sparked a war that has been increasingly defined by interethnic clashes between the Sunni-led rebellion and Assad’s Alawite-dominated regime.
And it would essentially pit the United States alongside regional allies in a proxy war against Iran, which is providing much of the materiel to the Syrian government’s counterinsurgency and, through Hezbollah, more of the manpower.