Officials: Russia could stop Syria
U.S. is ‘prepared to do more’ if brutality doesn’t cease
USA TODAY WASHINGTON Russia could have stopped its Syrian ally from conducting Tuesday’s poison gas attack that killed dozens of civilians but did not, U.S. officials said Friday.
That assessment, from a senior military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, went further than Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s accusation that Russia was incompetent in enforcing an agreement from 2013, under which Syria was to give up its chemical weapons.
The Trump administration is trying to stanch the deepening humanitarian crisis in Syria and prevent President Bashar Assad from using chemical weapons. Those actions come at the risk of increased friction with Moscow, which has supported the Assad regime and condemned the U.S. airstrikes.
The U.S. strikes were carefully designed to avoid hitting Russian personnel at the Syrian air base they targeted, U.S. officials said Friday. They said the presence of as many as 100 Russians at the base used to launch Tuesday’s chemical attack raises questions about whether Russia knew about the attacks and failed to stop them. The Defense officials were not authorized to speak publicly about the operation.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer deflected questions about whether the United States sought to send a signal to Russia. “The actions that were taken were against the Assad regime, and I’m not going to say anything more than that,” he said.
President Trump is “prepared to do more” to stop the civil war in Syria if Russia cannot convince Assad to abide by cease-fire agreements, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the U.N. Security Council on Friday.
“We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary. It is time for all civilized nations to stop the horrors that are taking place in Syria and demand a political solution,” Haley said.
The U.S. missile attack, which was launched at 7:40 p.m. ET Thursday, was Trump’s first major military action against another country. Trump had considered Syria an ally of convenience in the fight against the Islamic State, but his reluctance to involve U.S. forces there began to melt Tuesday morning, when he was presented with details of the chemical attack during his intelligence briefing.
The U.S. strike, which Pentagon officials and Spicer called successful, led to a Syrian condemnation Friday morning. Assad’s government called it a “blatant act of aggression.”
Nine civilians were killed, including four children, when the projectiles hit the base and nearby villages, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported. Several others were injured.
Assad’s office called the strikes “shortsighted,” “reckless” and “irresponsible.”
The Syrian army said the missile strikes made the United States a “partner” of the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist organizations fighting Assad.
Assad allies Russia and Iran also condemned the U.S. strikes, saying they violated international law. “It is an act of aggression under a completely far-fetched pretext,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday, according to TASS. “This is reminiscent of the situation in 2003, when the U.S. and the U.K., along with some of their allies, invaded Iraq without the consent of the U.N. Security Council and in violation of international law.”
It’s unclear how much the Kremlin knew about the U.S. strikes before they happened. The Kremlin said it received advance warning from the United States about the strikes.
“No contacts were made with Moscow, with President (Vladimir) Putin,” Tillerson said Thursday. “There were no discussions or prior contacts, nor have there been any since the attack, with Moscow.”
But there were certainly military-to-military communications with Russian forces in the region, under a process known as “deconfliction.” A hotline was set up during the Obama administration to ensure that U.S. and Russian forces don’t accidentally clash when taking action against Islamic State targets. Despite Thursday’s action, Russia agreed to maintain that hotline, the two Defense officials said.