It was hardly a surprise when last week’s much-anticipated Geneva II conference bringing representatives of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime together with opposition members came up empty. Nor was it surprising that, as recent press reports show, the administration’s plan to rid Assad of his chemical weapons has come up way short—to date, Syria has shipped out only 5 percent of its unconventional arsenal. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough defended the Russian-led chemicals weapons initiative, saying “it’s not falling apart, but we would like to see it proceed much more quickly than it is.”

But it is falling apart. The Russians designed the deal, and lured Obama into it, for no other purpose than to protect their Syrian client and use the White House to launder his reputation by making him an American partner in dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. Assad will turn in his chemical weapons slowly—and of course never in their entirety. Israeli reports show that Assad is stockpiling chemical weapons in “the heartland of his Alawite sect” “as an insurance policy in case [Syria] is eventually partitioned.”