Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s team denounced the “depravity” of North Korea’s reported decision to sell chemical weapons supplies to Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has used the banned weapons against his own people in a long-running civil war.
“This is something that the United States has had concerns about for quite some time, that North Korea, especially as North Korea becomes more desperate, that they look for different, creative, and horrific ways to try to make money to fund their criminal regime,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Tuesday. “And when I say ‘criminal regime,’ I mean their illegal nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”
That includes supplying chemical weapons paraphernalia to the Assad regime, according to an as-yet-unreleased United Nations report that leaked earlier Tuesday. The report, which Nauert stipulated she has not seen herself, blends the two most pressing weapons-of-mass-destruction crises in the world. North Korea is racing to develop the ability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon, while Assad’s use of chemical weapons has provoked one U.S. airstrike and divided the U.N. Security Council.
“If they are selling goods, material — whatever you want to call it — to Syria, it shows the depravity of the regime, and that is exactly why we stand so firmly behind our policy of denuclearization on the part of this administration and on behalf of the world,” Nauert said.
Russia, which is partnering with Assad in the Syrian civil war, has defended the dictator from charges that he has used chemical weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials instead blame terrorists for the attacks and accuse western powers of staging false flag incidents in order to justify attacks on Assad.
“The possible chemical weapons components were part of at least 40 previously unreported shipments by North Korea to Syria between 2012 and 2017 of prohibited ballistic missile parts and materials that could be used for both military and civilian purposes,” the New York Times reported after reviewing the U.N. document. “Crucial evidence of that was found in January 2017, when two ships carrying acid-resistant tiles, commonly used in the construction of chemical weapons factories, were interdicted at sea en route to Damascus, the report said.”
The U.N. report could add to the case against Assad, although Russia has impugned the credibility of U.N. investigators.
“The investigation … was a complete failure and it became a mechanism for political manipulation,” Vasily Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador to the U.N., said in early February.
President Trump ordered an airstrike against Syria in April 2017 in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons, but reports of the Assad regime using the weapons continue to surface. Nauert blamed Russia and Assad for a recent spate of reported gas attacks in Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb wracked by fighting airstrikes as the regime tries to stamp out insurgent fighters.
“The regime claims it is fighting terrorists, but is instead terrorizing hundreds of thousands of civilians with airstrikes, artillery, rockets, and a looming ground attack,” Nauert tweeted on Monday. “The regime’s use of chlorine gas as a weapon only intensifies the misery of the civilian population.”
