That's how I read it too. Sounds like he's saying that Assad is being backed by Putin and Iran, and that the price to pay for backing Assad is that the cabal will commit atrocities in order to sow chaos and eventually establish a central bank there. You can read it either way depending on whether you believe that Assad is the legitimate leader of a sovereign nation, or that he is a pure scoundrel as he is portrayed by fake news MSM. POTUS sure is a wordsmith - I knew he would figure out how to snatch the cheese without setting off the trap.