How much of a danger does the use of chemical weapons in Syria threaten Israel?

With Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s revelation last week that Israel is intervening militarily in Syria – especially when it comes to chemical weapons – the question arises: How much of a danger does that technology pose for Israel?

The answer depends on whether those weapons continue to be used by the Bashar Assad regime or whether they have been acquired by Hezbollah.

Assad and ISIS, of course, have used chemical weapons against each other, with a spike by Assad in recent months in his fight to take Aleppo.

But does this spike mean Israel is in greater danger of those same chemical weapons being directed against it? If so, why hasn’t the government adopted the state comptroller’s recommendations to continue distributing gas masks – instead completely halting gas mask distribution? If not, why would transferring chemical weapons to Hezbollah change anything?

A recap of recent history is required.

Among the most horrifying aspects of the five-year-old Syrian civil war was Assad’s use of chemical weapons in late 2012 and the massive August 2013 sarin gas attack that killed more than 1,400 civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

The attack on Ghouta led the US to threaten to intervene militarily to destroy Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal. After some of the most intense rounds of diplomacy in recent memory, Russia convinced the US to back off as part of an agreement in which Assad would quickly and verifiably declare and eliminate Syria’s arsenal of 1,308 metric tons of chemical agents, storage and production facilities, as well as associated equipment.

While the Obama administration was criticized for backing off its now infamous “redline,” there was also at least a partial net gain for Israel in that the deal did effectively eliminate the threat of further largescale chemical weapons attacks by the Assad regime against the Syrian people or neighboring states such as Israel.

But, in October, after a 13-month investigation, the fourth report of the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) confirmed that Assad’s forces have continued to drop chlorine-filled barrel bombs on civilian areas via Russian-supplied military helicopters.

The JIM report also said the helicopter flights originated from two bases where the 253rd and 255th and 618th Assad Syrian air squadrons are located.

Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball has recently noted that “although less destructive and deadly than the sarin nerve agent, Assad’s industrial chlorine barrel bomb attacks violate the CWC and are war crimes. These are the first-ever documented cases in which a CWC member state has used chemical weapons.”

As far as Israel is concerned, Kimball and most Israeli intelligence have said the chemical weapons being used by Assad in Syria are primarily chlorine and not the more dangerous chemical weapons such as sarin, VX and sulfur mustard. (The US has said ISIS is using a small volume of poorly weaponized mustard gas.)

It’s now evident that instead of eliminating chemical warfare in Syria, the 2013 deal merely shifted the type of chemicals used to lower-grade chemical weapons.

The deal removed the most dangerous substances, but it did not get rid of stocks of chlorine, which can be used in everything from purifying drinking water to whitening laundry.

Eliminating chlorine is an arduous process, and Assad seems to be implementing ad hoc chemical warfare, packing chlorine canisters into barrel bombs – crude metal containers pushed out of helicopters onto the target, including civilian neighborhoods.

According to a report by the Syrian American Medical Society, there have been 161 documented chemical attacks in Syria from the beginning of the conflict through 2015. The report said 77% of attacks came after the UN resolution and deal that got rid of its more dangerous weapons, with the vast majority of attacks being chlorine-based.

Chlorine can absolutely be fatal and its use in World War I was what led to the first convention banning the use of chemical weapons, the 1925 Geneva Protocol, one of the oldest and most widely observed conventions on the planet.

But unlike hitting poorly armed Syrian civilians and rebels, in a battle with Israel, it is more of a poor man’s weapon than a game-changer.

Israeli intelligence posits that the “really bad” chemical weapons are close to all gone, or in the single digits percentage of wise of what they were originally with an extremely reduced capability to deliver them. This is why they would use barrel bombs on civilians – which would not work in Israel since it would require Syria getting its helicopters past the Israeli air force.

It is then no mistake that the Israeli government stopped handing out gas masks, with observers saying that gas masks were also more of a show for the public.

Besides the primary chemical weapons threat being gone, they say the main deterrent to Syria chemical weapons was never gas masks, but rather the same deterrent that got the Germans, English and eventually the rest of the world to sign on to the anti-chemical weapons protocol.

Since everyone saw the mutual-assured battlefield destruction in World War I, observers argue that no country has used chemical weapons against another country with equal or more powerful WMDs, including during World War II and throughout the Cold War.

Imagine Syria trying to use chlorine on helicopters against Israel or trying to deliver its estimated small amounts of remaining sarin, VX or mustard gas supply on a few Israeli locations with Israel capable of responding with what foreign sources estimate are 75 to 400 nuclear weapons.

In other words, all of the chemical weapons use by Assad on his own civilians have no bearing on the chances of his using them on Israel.

If that theory is correct, and Assad is not going to use chemical weapons on Israel, why does Israel need to attack?

Therein lies the issue – transferring to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah may not be any more likely to execute a major chemical weapons assault on Israel than Assad. But it might be far more likely to use them in small increments in military engagements with the IDF. Whether in short skirmishes or in the next war, it would be another strategic increase in Hezbollah’s firepower that Israel would rather prevent.

Israel’s strategic doctrine is still primarily to win quickly or “bring the pain” to the other side to leverage a cease-fire from rocket attacks.

Whether anti-aircraft weapons or even lower-grade chemical weapons, any additional powerful and unpredictable weapon Hezbollah could acquire could kill more soldiers on the front or alter that balance and keep rockets flying longer than in the past.