As U.S. President Barack Obama began his campaign to deploy American warships and bombers to punish the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons against its own civilian population—a posture that involved passing the matter to Congress for its approval before any U.S. involvement commenced—in secret negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland this past week, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came to an agreement to forestall the threatened American attack on Syria’s WMD arsenal.
Under the terms of the agreement: 1. the Assad regime must provide a list of its chemical weapons and their storage sites; 2. UN investigators must be allowed into Syria to examine said materiel with “immediate and unfettered” access; 3. the initial investigation must be concluded by November 30th, and all chemical weapons must be either removed or destroyed by mid-2014.
With Syria’s tentative approval in hand, according to an AP/ABC News report, the U.S. and Russia have still not agreed on the number of sites where Syria’s chemical weapons are manufactured and stored. (This could be an issue in determining where the inspectors are to work.) Details about the composition of the inspection teams and their security must still be determined. And no specific penalties for Syrian noncompliance have been agreed upon. Moscow could veto measures it deems too harsh, as could China—another Syrian apologist—and a voting member of the UN Security Council.Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal has indicated: There are a hundred ways to cheat on this agreement. [Uncorroborated reporting by the Times of Israel maintains that twenty trucks laden with equipment used in the manufacture of chemical weapons were driven across the border from Syria into Iraq on the 12th and 13th, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal reported on September 15th.The trucks were “heavily protected” by security forces, and were not inspected by border guards, the paper reported, adding that its sources confirmed the illicit cargo.The report came amid ongoing claims by the leader of the Free Syrian Army, SalimIdriss, that Assad was busy hiding his chemical weapons so that, when UN inspectors arrive to record and ultimately oversee the destruction of his stockpiles, a sizable amount of his WMD stocks will not be affected.] The Wall Street Journal further declares that even if Assad does declare and destroy his entire CW stockpile, he will have emerged unpunished for having used these terror weapons. Assad will get a pass for promising not to do again what he claims he didn’t do but Kerry says he did at least 14 times.
Furthermore, according to the Times of Israel, Syrian President Assad has two biological weapons bases, developing anthrax and other devastating biological agents, and yet the U.S.-Russia deal makes no provisions for his biological weapons capability, Israeli TV Channel 10 reported. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper assessed in April that Syria could be capable of producing limited biological weapons and a 2008 report by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, citing Israeli sources, noted “reports of one underground facility and one near the coast,” and cited a “possible production capability for anthrax and botulism, and possibly other agents.”
In the face of this U.S. action, Israeli fears of inaction against Iran’s burgeoning nuclear production have caused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to comment:“ We have been closely following and support [the] ongoing efforts to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. The Syrian regime must be stripped of all its chemical weapons, and that would make our entire region a lot safer. [But] the world needs to ensure that radical regimes don’t have weapons of mass destruction because as we’ve learned once again in Syria, if rogue regimes have weapons of mass destruction, they will use them. The determination the international community shows regarding Syria will have a direct impact on the Syrian regime’s patron, Iran. Iran must understand the consequences of its continual defiance of the international community by its pursuit towards nuclear weapons…What the past few days have shown is…that if diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat. What is true of Syria is true of Iran.”
By Phil Sieradski
