{"id":86732,"date":"2013-12-14T07:50:36","date_gmt":"2013-12-14T05:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=86732"},"modified":"2023-04-08T12:48:55","modified_gmt":"2023-04-08T09:48:55","slug":"assad-win-may-be-syrias-best-option-ex-cia-chief-michael-hayden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/12\/14\/assad-win-may-be-syrias-best-option-ex-cia-chief-michael-hayden\/","title":{"rendered":"Assad win may be Syria&#8217;s best option &#8211; ex-CIA chief Michael Hayden"},"content":{"rendered":"<header><time class=\"article-time\" itemprop=\"datePublished\" datetime=\"2013-12-13T11:39:00\">13 December 2013, 11:39<\/time> <span class=\"article-comments_count comments_count\" id=\"comments_count_255573417\" style=\"visibility: hidden;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-header page-title heading heading__serifed\">\n<h1 itemprop=\"name\"><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"article-media article-media__video\">\n<div class=\"article-media-img-wrap\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-86736\" alt=\"Syrian President Bashar Al Assad TV interview in Damascus\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/ASSAD.jpg\" width=\"460\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/ASSAD.jpg 460w, https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/ASSAD-300x175.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"img-copyright\">\n<p>Photo: EPA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-caption\">\n<p>The sectarian bloodbath in Syria is such a threat to regional security that a victory for Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s regime could the best outcome to hope for, a former CIA chief said Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-timeline article-stretcher article-hovered\">\n<p id=\"p_10\">Washington condemned Assad&#8217;s conduct of the conflict, threatened air strikes after he was accused of targeting civilians with chemical weapons and has demanded he step down.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_20\">The United States is also supplying millions of dollars in &#8220;non-lethal&#8221; aid to some of the rebel groups fighting Assad&#8217;s rule.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_30\">But Michael Hayden, the retired US Air Force general who until 2009 was head of the Central Intelligence Agency, said a rebel win was not one of the three possible outcomes he foresees for the conflict.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_40\">&#8220;Option three is Assad wins,&#8221; Hayden told the annual Jamestown Foundation conference of terror experts.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_50\">&#8220;And I must tell you at the moment, as ugly as it sounds, I&#8217;m kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_60\">The first possible outcome he cited was for ongoing conflict between ever more extreme Sunni and Shiite factions.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_70\">The rebel groups are dominated by Sunni Muslims, while Assad is generally backed by Syria&#8217;s Alawite, Shiite and Christian minorities.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_80\">And the second outcome, which Hayden deemed the most likely, was the &#8220;dissolution of Syria&#8221; and the end of a single state within the borders defined by a 1916 treaty between the French and British empires.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_90\">&#8220;It means the end of the Sykes-Picot (Agreement), it sets in motion the dissolution of all the artificial states created after World War I,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_100\">The British diplomat Mark Sykes and a French counterpart Francois Georges Picot divided the Middle East into zones of influence that later served as the frontiers of independent Arab states.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_110\">A breakdown in the century-old settlement could spread chaos in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, Hayden warned.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_120\">&#8220;I greatly fear the dissolution of the state. A de facto dissolution of Sykes-Picot,&#8221; Hayden said.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_130\">&#8220;And now we have a new ungoverned space, at the crossroads of the civilization.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_140\">&#8220;The dominant story going on in Syria is a Sunni fundamentalist takeover of a significant part of the Middle East geography, the explosion of the Syrian state and of the Levant as we know it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_150\">Fighting erupted in Syria in early 2011, when Assad launched a crackdown on pro-democracy protests and has since evolved into a full-blown civil war that has claimed an estimated 126,000 lives.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_160\">Assad, backed by Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, is locked in combat with a diverse group of Sunni rebel factions which are increasingly dominated by hardline jihadist groups.<\/p>\n<p id=\"p_170\">Voice of Russia, AFP<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-tags\">\n<div class=\"tags\"><span class=\"tag\">US<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">CIA<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">Syria<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">intelligence<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">Bashar Assad<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">Syrian opposition<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">intelligence agent<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">Syrian conflict<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">Syrian government<\/span>, <span class=\"tag\">Politics<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>13 December 2013, 11:39 Photo: EPA The sectarian bloodbath in Syria is such a threat to regional security that a victory for Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s regime could the best outcome to hope for, a former CIA chief said Thursday. Washington condemned Assad&#8217;s conduct of the conflict, threatened air strikes after he was accused of targeting civilians [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":86736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[8432],"class_list":["post-86732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-bashar-assad-regime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}