The Obama administration’s decision to directly supply weapons to the Syrian opposition may end up torpedoing the possibility of a political settlement. It will almost certainly accelerate the chaos spreading from the almost three-year old civil war. It will also align Washington with one of the most undemocratic alliances on the planet, and one that looks increasingly unstable.

In short, we are headed into a perfect political storm.

While the rationale behind the White House’s decision to send light arms and ammunition to the rebels is that it will level the playing field and force the Assad regime to the bargaining table, it much more likely to do exactly the opposite. The United States is now a direct participant in the war to bring down the Damascus regime, thus sheddingany possibility that, along with Russia, it could act as a neutral force to bring the parties together.

Of course Washington has hardly been a disinterested bystander in the Syrian civil war. For more than two years it has helped facilitate the flow of arms from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates across the Jordanian and Turkish borders, and the CIA is training insurgents in Jordan. But the White House has always given lip service to a “diplomatic solution,” albeit one whose outcome was preordained: “Assad must go,” President Obama said in August 2011, a precondition that early on turned this into a fight to the death.

As Ramzy Mardini, a former U.S. State Department official for Near Eastern affairs, recently wrote in the New York Times,