The U.S. and its allies launched “precision strikes” against Syria, the president said Friday night, after a deadly suspected chemical weapons attack there Saturday.
Britain and France joined the U.S. in the retaliatory action targeting Syrian leader Bashar al Assad’s chemical weapons program. “I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapon capabilities of Syrian dictator of Bashar al-Assad,” Trump said from the White House.
“The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons,” he added.
The attack in Douma, a suburb outside of Damascus that has long been rebel-held, left more than forty dead and hundreds affected by “symptoms indicative of exposure to a chemical agent,” according to the Syrian American Medical Society.
“These are not the actions of a man. They are crimes of a monster instead,” Trump said Friday. Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had been set to begin its investigation of the attack Saturday.
Friday’s action comes after days of tweets from the president related to a potential retaliatory military action. Trump called out Assad’s key backers, Russia and Iran, in a tweet after the attack and warned that there would be a “big price to pay.” He then warned Russia on Wednesday that missiles “will be coming” and said, “you shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”
U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley slammed both Iran and Russia this week and said that the U.S. would respond to Saturday’s attack regardless of Russian objections at the Security Council. The next day, Russia vetoed a U.S.-drafted resolution that would have created a one-year investigative mechanism for chemical weapons use and would have identified those responsible for their use.
“Russia’s obstructionism will not continue to hold us hostage when we are confronted with an attack like this one,” Haley said Monday. “The United States is determined to see the monster who dropped chemical weapons on the Syrian people held to account.”
Iran and Russia have military advisers at Assad’s airfields, Haley said, and the Syrian military uses hardware provided by Russian when it “pummels civilians.”
In the days since Saturday’s attack, top Republican lawmakers have expressed support for a targeted strike similar to one the president ordered roughly one year ago, after the Assad regime conducted a sarin gas attack in northwestern Syria.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker, who has been working on writing a new authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) focused on terrorist groups, said Monday that a surgical strike would not need congressional approval.
“If we are going to go against the regime on any kind of sustained basis, there has to be an AUMF,” Corker told reporters. “But if there’s something surgical in response to humanitarian issues, that would not be necessary.”
Friday’s strike comes shortly after Trump’s military advisers reportedly convinced him not to make good on his remarks in late March that the U.S. would withdraw from Syria “very soon.” They told the president that the mission against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria is not yet complete, and that they need more time to “train local forces to stabilize the liberated territory,” the New York Times reported. Trump has made known his desire to withdraw troops in coming months.
