President Trump is determined to authorize additional airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime if Assad’s forces continue to use chemical weapons, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley declared Saturday.
“I spoke to the president this morning and he said if the Syrian regime uses this poisonous gas again, the United States is locked and loaded,” Haley said during a U.S. Security Council meeting Saturday morning. “When our president draws a red line, our president enforces the red line.”
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Haley offered that warning in defiance of Russian complaints that the Friday night attack — a joint strike by American, British, and French forces — violated international law due to the lack of a mandate from the Security Council. But Haley blamed Russia, which killed a U.N. body designed to investigate gas attacks in Syria, for Assad’s use of chemical weapons in the ongoing civil war.
“Russia’s veto was the green light for the Assad regime to use these most barbaric weapons against the Syrian people in complete violation of international law,” she said. “The United States was not going to let that stand. Chemical weapons are a threat to us all. They are a unique threat — a type of weapon so evil that the international community agreed they must be banned.”
