Rex: Assad’s going down

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad’s days in power are numbered — as Vladimir Putin compared US allegations of a Syrian chemical-weapons attack to false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion.

“I think it is clear to all of us that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” Tillerson told reporters in Italy, before flying to Moscow.

The US goal, he added, was a transition that would lead to a unified, durable government chosen by the Syrian people.

Tillerson — who had met Putin as the chief executive of ExxonMobil, and received an Order of Freedom medal in 2013 from Putin himself — also said Russia was on the wrong side of the Syrian civil war.

America’s top diplomat said the Kremlin can either stand with the United States and other “like-minded” nations against Assad or side with Assad and his allies, Iran and the militant group Hezbollah.

Putin, meanwhile, claimed the United States is trying to fake the use of chemical weapons in Syria as an excuse for another military strike against Assad.

“This reminds me strongly of the events in 2003, when the US representatives demonstrated at the UN Security Council session the presumed chemical weapons found in Iraq,” Putin said at a news conference in Moscow.

“We have information that a similar provocation is being prepared . . . in other parts of Syria, including in the southern Damascus suburbs where they are planning to again plant some substance and accuse the Syria authorities of using [chemical weapons].”

But he didn’t provide any evidence of the claim.

Putin’s comments came hours before Tillerson’s plane touched down in Moscow, where he will meet with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday amid escalating tensions between the two powers over the Syrian civil war and Russia’s support for Assad.