Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump responded to an alleged Syrian chemical weapons strike by destroying much of a Syrian weapons facility with a missile strike from an offshore vessel. French President Emmanuel Macron has since said that France would pursue similar action if Syria continued to use chemical weapons, easing tension regarding the unilateral U.S. decision to take action in the conflict.
Chemical weapons are outlawed internationally, but the Chemical Weapons Convention, of which Syria is a signatory, though the Syrian government has been accused of using them regularly during their ongoing civil war, leading to high civilian casualties. Peter Wilson, the U.K. envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, cited 390 allegations of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government in the last four years and said that, “chemical weapons use has become an all too regular weapon of war in the Syrian conflict.”
Last week, international aid groups reported the use of chemical weapons in an attack on April 7, during the then ongoing siege of Douma in South Eastern Syria. Following the attack, Russia, a key ally of the Syrian government, encouraged an international team to further investigate the matter before taking action, saying initially that the attack was staged and later that the supposed attack was actually the result of Syrian artillery hitting a rebel chemical weapons center, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters.
In the meantime, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin exchanged heated words over America’s potential attack on Syrian weapons facilities and Russia’s planned defense and possible retaliation against America.
On Saturday, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom launched a joint missile strike against the Syrian facility that was believed to have been the site of research, development and storage of the chemical weapons used in the attack. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley also said that the United States would announce further sanctions against the Syrian government in response to the alleged chemical weapons attack. Russia did not act to prevent or respond to the attack, according to Reuters.
It is unclear as of this writing whether France and the United Kingdom will follow suit. The Group of Seven has officially declared support for the missile strike, and Saudi Arabia is in talks with the White House regarding the deployment of Saudi troops in Syria, according to the Associated Press. The presidents of nearby Turkey and Iran have condemned the attack and future attacks saying that they only increase tension in the region, and Russia has said that the missile strike was a violation of international law, and that it hurt the peace process in Syria, according to Reuters. Macron defended the attack in an address to the European parliament, saying that the strike was organized within a “legitimate multilateral framework.”
The OPCW began an investigation of the site of the alleged attack on Tuesday, though America has accused Russians of tampering with evidence in the meantime as Russians make it difficult for other entities to access the site of the alleged attack, according to the Associated Press.
Russia has denied the accusations but has not allowed other agencies access to the site on security grounds. “[Syrian and Russian officials] have informed the fact-finding mission that there were still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place,” a director of the OPCW told Al Jazeera. As of this writing, it is unclear whether Russian and Syrian officials will allow other groups access to the site after the safety of the area has been confirmed.
