DON’T TEST US: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Rodham Clinton warns Syrian President Bashar al-Assad yesterday that use of chemical weapons will prompt a US response. (
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President Obama is considering using military force to prevent Syria from using chemical and biological weapons against its own people after a new intelligence report indicates Damascus might do so, US officials said yesterday.
In an apparent warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the president said the use of chemical weapons “is and would be totally unacceptable.”
The remarks came during a speech at the National Defense University in Washington yesterday.
“If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable,” Obama said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton echoed the president’s warning but wouldn’t outline specifics.
“Suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur,” Clinton said during a trip to Prague.
The administration is considering everything from aerial strikes to ground raids by US allies in the area to secure Syria’s stockpiles of the weapons, one current and one former US official briefed on the matter told The Associated Press.
The administration has been reluctant to dispatch US forces to Syria — but a special operations training team in neighboring Jordan is teaching troops from the region how to safely secure chemical-weapons sites, officials said.
US intelligence has detected signs the Syrian regime is moving components for chemical weapons around several sites in recent days, a senior American defense official told the AP.
The United States still doesn’t know whether the regime is planning to use them, but there is increasing concern because there is the sense that Assad is under greater pressure now.
The Assad regime insists it won’t use chemical weapons — if it has them — “against its own people under any circumstances.”
The regime is party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning chemical weapons in war.
But fighting between rebels and government forces raged near Damascus yesterday, forcing an inbound commercial jet to turn back, while the UN said it was withdrawing staff because of deteriorating security conditions.
US intelligence has also intercepted a communication from Iran’s infamous Quds Force urging Syria to use toxic Sarin gas against rebels and civilian supporters in the city of Homs, the former American official said.
Israel is worried that Syrian chemical weapons could end up in the hands of anti-Israel groups such as Hezbollah as Syria becomes more desperate.
Syria has some 75 sites where weapons are stored, but US officials aren’t sure they have tracked down all the locations and fear some have already been moved.
“In Syria, they have everything from mustard agent, Sarin nerve gas, and some variant of the nerve agent VX,” James Quinlivan, a Rand Corp. analyst who specializes in the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, told AP.
Until now, the United States has opposed military intervention and arming Syrian rebels for fear of fanning the flames of a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.