Applause, anger over Syria strikes
U.S. allies cheer Trump; Russia backers denounce actions.
The U.S. military strike against Syria threatened Russia-U.S. relations on Friday as the Kremlin denounced President Donald Trump’s use of force and the Russian military announced that it was suspending an agreement to share information about air operations over the country that was devised to avoid accidental conflict.
Trump, who had made repairing strained ties with Moscow a central goal of his presidency even amid criticism of Russian meddling in last year’s U.S. election, found that goal at risk as both sides traded harsh words in a diplomatic confrontation reminiscent of the darkest moments of the last few years.
President Vladimir Putin’s office called the Tomahawk
cruise missile strike on Syria a “significant blow” to the Russia-U.S.relationshipanda violation of international law, while Trump administration officials suggested Russia bore some responsibility for the chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians that precipitated the U.S. response.
Thestrikeroiledworldcapitals and dominated a session of the United Nations General Assembly. Led by Russia, Syria and its other backers denounced the military action while U.S. allies in Europe, Israel and Saudi Arabia cheered Trump on. At home, Trump found support among a broad cross-section of normally critical establishmentRepublicansandDemocrats, from Hillary Clinton to JohnMcCain,whopraisedhim for taking action that President Barack Obama did not under similar circumstances four years ago.
But in a sign of the com- plicated nature of domestic politics after nearly 16 years of U.S. wars in far-off lands, an odd-bedfellow mix of ideological enemies joined together to criticize Trump’s action, including anti-war liberals who said it violated the Constitution and isolationist conservatives who called it a betrayal of the values he expressed as a candidate.
Trump,whowasinFlorida meetingwithPresidentXiJinping of China, left it to others to address the confrontation on Friday, but his team signaled that no further military strikes were imminent unlesstheSyriangovernment of President Bashar Assad again used chemical weapons against its own people.
“The United States took a very measured step last night,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday during a special meeting of the Security Council focused on Syria. “We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary.”
Even as Trump ordered the first direct intervention beyond fighting terrorist factions in Syria’s grinding six-year civil war, the White House indicated no further move to unseat Assad, leaving the strike to speak for itself.
“This action was very decisive, justified and proportional,” said Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary. “It sent a very strong signal not just to Syria, but throughout the world.”
But the airstrike inserted the United States, for a moment at least, into one of the world’s most intractable conflicts and demonstrated the potential dangers of Russian and U.S. forces’ operating in proximity. As many as 100 Russian troops were believed to be stationed at the Syrian air base targeted by U.S. forces. A U.S. official said the Russians on the ground had been given just 60 to 90 minutes of notice that the missiles were coming and had not been advised whether to take shelter or flee.
Although Russia did not deploy its air defense system in Syria against the U.S. missiles, it flexed its military muscles after the attack. Moscow said it would bolster Syria’s air defenses, while the Russian news agency Tass reported that a frigate would enter the Mediterranean Sea and visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus.
The Russian military sent an official message to the Pentagon and summoned the U.S. military attaché in Moscow to announce that it would shut down a hotline established to prevent accidental clashes in the skies over Syria. While the two sides used the channel earlier on Friday, Russian officials said it would be cut off at midnight Moscow time, or 5 p.m. in Washington. The UnitedStatesandRussiahave other ways to track each other’s aircraft and avoid collisions, but U.S. officials considered the hotline an important vehicle to ensure safety, and a valuable political connection as well.
Even as Moscow protested, U.S. officials pointed fingers back, faulting the Kremlin for not enforcing a 2013 agreement it brokered with Syria to eliminate all of its chemical weapons.
“Clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday night. “So either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver onitsendofthatagreement.”
Russia denied that Syria had any chemical weapons or that Assad’s government was behind the chemical attack in Idlib province on Tuesday that left more than 80 people dead: an attack that Western officials have said was conducted with sarin, a lethal nerve agent. Moscow said the attack was a false pretext to launch an air assault against Assad’s government.
“The Syrian army has no chemical weapons at its disposal,” said Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, blaming “terrorists” for the gas attack.
Syria on Friday condemned the U.S. strike as “a disgraceful act,” news agencies reported. A statement from Assad’s office said the cruise missile strike was a result of “a false propaganda campaign.” Syria has denied that it still has chemical weapons.
The cruise missiles struck the Shayrat airfield at 3:40 a.m. Friday local time (8:40 p.m. Thursday in Washington), targeting the base that U.S. officials said had conducted the chemical weapons attack. The missiles were aimed at Syrian aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, radars, air defense systems, ammunition bunkers and fuel storage sites.
U.S. military planners avoided targeting sites that they suspected of holding chemical agents, officials said.
Syrian officials and news outlets reported that six soldiers and nine civilians had been killed. Talal Barazi, governor of Homs province, said the civilians had died from shrapnel wounds.
The White House said all 59 missiles had hit their targets. But a spokesman for the Russian military, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, called the effectiveness of the U.S. airstrikes “extremely low,” asserting that just 23 of the 59 missiles had hit their targets.
TheU.S.missilesdestroyed a warehouse of material and technical property, a training building, a canteen, six MiG23 aircraft in repair hangars, and a radar station, according to the Russian military.
A Russian television reporter, Evgeny Poddubny, who was at the air base, said nine planes had been destroyed.