A panicky Bashar al-Assad ordered the horrific poison-gas attack last month because he feared Damascus was about to fall to Syrian rebels, an intercepted phone call revealed.
A senior official of Hezbollah, whose fighters are propping up the brutal Syrian regime, was overheard saying Assad’s decision to use chemical weapons was a blunder that showed he had lost his nerve, Germany’s spymaster, Gerhard Schindler said in a secret briefing of German lawmakers on Monday.
Schindler’s BND spy agency heard the Hezbollah official tell the Iranian embassy in Damascus to blame Assad for ordering the attack, participants in the briefing told Reuters and the German publication Der Spiegel.
A German ship with sophisticated surveillance equipment capable of intercepting telephone and radio communications is stationed off the Mediterranean coast of Syria.
Schindler said Assad may have hoped the attack would intimidate the rebels, who hold outposts in the suburbs of his capital.
The high death toll — at least 1,429 people — may be due to Assad’s men making mistakes in mixing the gas and launching much more potent batches, Schindler said.
German intelligence analysis also found it virtually certain that the weapon used was sarin.
Despite the BND conclusion that Assad was responsible for the attack, Germany is refusing to join the US in military strikes against the Syrian regime.
A senior diplomat said the UN chemical-weapons inspection team that left Syria with samples is speeding up its analysis and hopes to have it done in two or three weeks.