Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces used chemical weapons during an assault against the final rebel-held region of the country, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The United States has concluded that the Assad regime used chlorine as a chemical weapon on May 19th,” Pompeo told reporters at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “The United States will not allow these attacks to go unchallenged, nor will we tolerate those who choose to conceal these atrocities.”
Pompeo’s announcement follows months of investigation into the incident, marking the third time that the U.S. government has accused Assad of using chemical weapons since 2017. President Trump has treated the use of chemical weapons in Syria as a “red line” that provokes military retaliation, but Pompeo was ambiguous about how he might respond in this case.
“This is different in some sense, in that it was chlorine, so it’s a bit of a different situation,” he said. “But know that President Trump has been pretty vigorous in protecting the world from the use of chemical weapons.”
Trump ordered strikes against the Assad regime two times. The first U.S. retaliation on Assad’s forces was prompted by the use of a chemical weapon, in April of 2017, that international investigators identified as sarin gas. U.S. and western allies hit Assad’s regime again last year, following an April 2018 incident in a Damascus suburb. “This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine,” the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announced after an investigation. “The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”
A Defense Department spokesman declined to elaborate on Pompeo’s remarks. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman James Risch called for Congress to pass legislation imposing additional sanctions on the Assad regime.
“This horrific attack is just one of the many atrocities perpetrated by the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers over the course of Syria’s eight-year-long civil war,” Risch, an Idaho Republican, said Thursday evening. “The regime and its backers must be held to account for their crimes, some of which rise to the level of war crimes.”
In the meantime, the Trump administration is increasing funding for the OPCW to investigate chemical weapons attacks. The Treasury Department also blacklisted a Russian supply network that has “been facilitating the illicit transfer of jet fuel to the Russian military in Syria,” a top Treasury Department official announced earlier Thursday. Russia, which provides Assad with vital military support, has echoed his claims of innocence about chemical weapons attacks throughout the conflict.
“The Syrian regime should know and the world should appreciate the fact that we’re going to do everything we can reasonably do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, which starts with identifying both what took place and who should properly be held accountable for that,” Pompeo said.
