Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said President Trump has not considered ordering the assignation of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, as reported in an explosive new book.
“I have the pleasure of being privy to those conversations — when we’ve dealt with the chemical weapons, when we’ve dealt with the responses, when we’ve dealt with everything — and I have not once ever heard the president talk about assassinating Assad,” Haley told reporters during a press briefing Tuesday.
Trump is quoted in Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, “Fear,” as suggesting to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that U.S. forces “kill” Assad after the regime used chemical weapons in April 2017. Eventually, Trump ordered airstrikes on a more modest set of Syrian government targets, in the first direct U.S. action against the regime.
Haley was asked about the anecdote during a press conference at the U.N., in which she warned about the threat of another round of chemical weapons attacks. Russian officials maintain that terrorists are planning to stage a chemical weapons attack in order to provoke western powers to take another strike at Assad, who is preparing to launch a new offensive. Haley derided those warnings.
“That is the exact formula they always follow before a chemical weapons attack that Assad does on his own people,” she said.
Russia maintains that Assad doesn’t possess chemical weapons anymore. “Syria’s chemical arsenals were fully eliminated under the international surveillance in 2014-2015 during a unique operation involving the United States,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week.
That’s a reference to the agreement negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in which Russia pledged to oversee the destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles. But international monitors concluded, as recently as June, that sarin gas was used in another city that the Assad regime assaulted, although Russia has opposed allowing the investigative agency to assign blame.
“If they want to continue to go the route of taking over Syria, they can do that, but they cannot do it with chemical weapons,” Haley emphasized Tuesday. “They can’t do it assaulting their people. And we’re not going to fall for it.”
