On August 20, 2012, President Obama called the use of chemical weapons by Syria’s Assad regime a “red line.” Four years on with the Syrian war still raging, DW asked three scholars to assess Washington’s Syria policy.

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Gordon Adams: The Obama policy has not reversed the trend in Syria. But it could not change much. Basically, the US has very little leverage over the players – the Turks, the Iranians, the Saudis, Bashar al-Assad, the Russians, Hezbollah, among others. What the US lacks in Syria is leverage. So almost regardless of what Obama had done, the crisis would have progressed the way it did.

Read the full interview here.