Will arming rebels turn the tide of Syria's war?

President Obama has authorized the delivery of weapons to Syrian rebels after the U.S. concluded that government forces had indeed used illegal chemical weapons, which Obama had described as a "red line."

The rebels have faced a run of stinging setbacks recently. First, they lost the strategically important city of Qusayr on the Lebanese border, after thousands of Hezbollah militants from Lebanon poured in to assist Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Now, the Syrian military is launching an offensive against another rebel stronghold, Aleppo.

Will U.S. weapons help the rebels turn the tide?

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Many experts say the aid could have helped the rebels win earlier, but now it's too little, too late. Con Coughlin at Britain's Telegraph says Obama could have propelled pro-democracy demonstrators to victory if he had backed them fully when their uprising began more than two years ago. Now, though, al Qaeda fighters have hijacked the rebel cause, he says, and 93,000 people have died in a fight that true supporters of democracy can no longer win.

At the very least, though, it will be a lot harder for Assad to finish off the rebels now that the U.S. is stepping up military aid. David Butter of Chatham House, an international affairs think tank, tells ITV that Obama appears to be responding to Assad's victory in Qusayr, in a bid to prevent the regime from crushing its opponents with help from Iran and Hezbollah. The U.S., Butter says, "probably judges that the rebels need critical support to prevent regime breakthroughs in Deraa (south) and Aleppo (north)."

But for that to happen, the rebels will need the U.S. weapons fast. "I think the rebels are in trouble," Jeffrey White of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy tells The New York Times. "Speed is of the essence. The regime's momentum needs to be brought to a halt."

Some analysts think that dragging out the war might be what the Obama administration is aiming to accomplish. Daniel W. Drezner at Foreign Policy suggests that arming the rebels is just an extension of the same "unspoken, brutally realpolitik policy towards Syria that's been going on for the past two years." Drezner says the U.S. wants to force Iran, Hezbollah, and Assad into "doubling down and committing more resources" to this war; that requires doing just enough to make sure "rebels are holding their own or winning."

So how far will Obama go? The Obama administration is balking at sending anti-aircraft weapons, over concerns that al Qaeda-linked rebel factions might get their hands on them and use them to take down an airliner. But Obama has reportedly approved sending anti-tank weapons, and diplomats say the U.S. is even considering imposing a no-fly zone along the Jordanian border.