Globe-trotting U.S. Secretary of State John Kelly has left India for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait before flying to Jordan and Israel later this week to tackle the issue of Palestinian Authority demands.
The Saudi kingdom is a powerful ally of the United States and is solidly behind the rebels in the Syrian civil war. Kerry and the Obama administration want to get rid of Assad and have come out in favor of arming the rebels but still are concerned that a terrorist regime might replace Assad, if and when he is ousted or killed.
“If the United States does nothing, and the rest of the world does nothing, then Syria is going to wind up in an even worse condition than it is today,” Kerry told CBS News from New Delhi. He said it would be even worse if Syria were to break up, “with radicals, extremists able to get a hold of chemical weapons and free to use it as a base to begin to conduct their operations again against the West and the United States.