In a Wednesday press conference at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter accused Russia of “pouring gasoline on the fire” by opening a long-term aerial campaign against the enemies of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, warning that the Kremlin risks taking on not only ISIS but “the whole rest of Syria.”

After weeks of build-up inside the war-wracked Mid-East nation, Russian warplanes bombed targets in northern Syria on Wednesday. Carter said he was informed just one hour before the attacks began after a Russian official paid a brief visit to America’s embassy in Baghdad — a move he called “unprofessional.”

Though Russian president Vladimir Putin says the aerial bombardment is designed to halt ISIS’s advance, the terrorist group does not have a presence in the region Russia’s warplanes are targeting.

Assad is a longtime Russian ally. He allows the Russian navy to lease and operate a strategically critical base in Tartus, on the Mediterranean Sea, and has become a key buyer of Russian weapons since the Syrian Civil War began. Some estimates have valued Russian arms sales to Syria at $1.5 billion per year, or 10 percent of global Russian arms exports.

#share#Reports indicate that Assad requested the Russian strikes on Wednesday, and the targets appear to have been moderate rebel groups fighting the Syrian president with the support of U.S. intelligence services.

“Russia states its intent to fight [ISIS] with one hand, and to support Bashar al-Assad and his regime with the other,” Carter said. “Fighting [ISIS] without pursuing a parallel political transition only risks escalating the civil war in Syria, and with it the very extremism and instability that Moscow claims to be concerned about and aspire to fighting. That approach is tantamount to pouring gasoline on the fire.”

#related#Carter warned the Russians that by supporting the loathed Syrian dictator against his enemies they risked “taking on the whole rest of Syria,” a proposition he said was “doomed to failure.”

The defense secretary said talks were being planned between U.S. and Russian commanders to avoid accidental aerial confrontations between the two nations’ air forces. But he rejected the Russian government’s request that American planes leave Syrian airspace.

“We intend to continue to conduct air operations — the entire coalition does — to combat [the Islamic State] and other extremists in Syria, as we have been doing,” he said. “We don’t intend to make any change to our operations.”

— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.