WASHINGTON — The already fragmented battlefield in Syria grew even more complicated on Friday, as Russia and Iran expanded their military efforts to defend the beleaguered Syrian government in defiance of President Obama, who predicted that their actions would lead only to a “quagmire.”
In his first comments since Russia began airstrikes on Syrian targets this week, Mr. Obama said that Moscow was acting “not out of strength but out of weakness.” Bristling at criticism of his own Syria policy, he rejected domestic opponents who offer “half-baked ideas” that amount to “a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.”
“An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference at the White House on Friday, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a longtime ally of both Russia and Iran. “And they will be there for a while if they don’t take a different course.”
Neither Russia nor Iran showed signs of listening. While Moscow widened its airstrikes to hit Islamic State territory for the first time, Russian troops have unloaded a major long-range artillery system to add more firepower to its deployment in Syria, according to an American official. At the same time, American officials said Iran had sent additional ground troops to bolster Mr. Assad’s government.
Mr. Obama was left to confront a deteriorating situation over which he seemed to have even less control than before. In New York, Secretary of State John Kerry met with the foreign minister of Iran without any apparent breakthrough, while American allies from Europe and the Middle East publicly called on Russia to stop bombing the moderate Syrian opposition to Mr. Assad.
The president said that his program to select, train and arm Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, had failed in part because he had insisted they battle only the militants — and not also focus on toppling Mr. Assad’s government. “I’m the first one to acknowledge it has not worked the way it was supposed to,” he said. Instead, he said the United States wanted to work more closely with Kurdish allies who have enjoyed some success against the Islamic State to see “if we can built on that.”
In Moscow on Friday, the Defense Ministry said its warplanes hit an ISIS training camp near the town of Maaden Jedid and a command post near Kasert-Faraj, both southwest of Raqqa.
The Russians also reportedly hit Qaryatayn, south of Homs, according to Mayadeen TV, a Lebanese channel close to the Damascus government. ISIS forces captured the town recently and are still holding some Assyrian Christian hostages there.
The other four areas that Syrian state TV reported being hit by Russian forces were known to be controlled by rebel groups other than ISIS. The Russian Navy meanwhile deployed the missile cruiser Moscow to defend Russian planes stationed near Latakia, according to Interfax.
Mr. Obama, who met with Mr. Putin in New York on Monday, excoriated him on Friday.
“Mr. Putin had to go into Syria not out of strength but out of weakness, because his client Mr. Assad was crumbling,” Mr. Obama said. Making no distinction between the Islamic State and other rebel groups is a “recipe for disaster” that would “turbocharge ISIL recruitment and jihadist recruitment,” he added.
Clearly frustrated by assertions that Mr. Putin had gotten the upper hand, Mr. Obama said the Russians were the ones who were isolated. “Iran and Assad make up Mr. Putin’s coalition at the moment,” he said. “The rest of the world makes up ours.”
He dismissed critics of his policy. “When I hear people offering up half-baked ideas as if they are solutions or trying to downplay the challenges involved in the situation, what I’d like to see people ask is, specifically, precisely, what exactly would you do and how would you fund it and how would you sustain it?” he said. “And typically, what you get is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.”
In response to a reporter, he strained to explain that he did not mean his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who just Thursday backed a no-fly zone in Syria, a policy he has rejected. But he suggested her view was a campaign position.
“Hillary Clinton is not half-baked in terms of her approach to these problems,” Mr. Obama said. “But I also think that there’s a difference between running for president and being president.”
Correction: October 2, 2015
An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Secretary of State John Kerry met on Friday with the foreign minister of Russia, Sergey V. Lavrov. The two met several times this week, but not on Friday.
