The US rebuts Russia claims
After Kremlin blames rebels, intel reports pin sarin strike on the Syrian government
The Trump administration took the unusual step Tuesday of unveiling intelligence discrediting Russian attempts to shield its ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, from blame in last week’s deadly chemical attack.
The newly released details of a U.S. intelligence assessment, which officials said demonstrated Syrian culpability in the April 4 assault that killed at least 70 people, added to rapidly escalating tensions with the Kremlin and signaled a move away from hopes for U.S. rapprochement with Russia.
Officials said their case against the Syrian government
included signals and aerial intelligence — combined with local reporting and samples taken from victims of the attack — that showed a Russian-made, Syrian-piloted SU-22 aircraft dropping at least one munition carrying the nerve agent sarin.
The declassified findings formed part of a coordinated broadside against Russia from the White House, State Department and Pentagon. The choreographed critiques appeared to show a desire to impose order on what has been the administration’s chaotic, often contradictory public stance on national security matters.
The increasingly hostile stance toward Russia takes place less than a week after the administration, in a sign of its rapidly evolving foreign policy positions, launched a barrage of missile strikes on a Syrian air base in retaliation for the chemical attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the time had come for Russia to rethink its support for the Syrian government, which has been blamed for repeated atrocities in Syria’s ongoing civil war.
“In this particular case we’re going to be very forceful … to make sure that we let Russia know that they need to live up to the obligations it has made,” he said.
Spicer’s remarks came as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his first official visit to Moscow, where he is expected to press Russia to choose between Syria and the West.
Claiming that Assad’s rule “is coming to an end,” Tillerson previewed his message to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“We hope that the Russian government concludes that they have aligned themselves with an unreliable partner in Bashar alAssad,” he said.
In what was in effect an ultimatum, he said Moscow must calculate the costs of remaining an ally of Assad, the Iranians and Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah.
“Is that a long-term alliance that serves Russia’s interests?” he told reporters. “Or would Russia prefer to realign with the United States, with other Western countries and Middle East countries that are seeking to resolve the Syrian crisis?”
According to U.S. officials who spoke about intelligence findings on the condition of anonymity, U.S. surveillance tracked the aircraft as it took off from a base near the city of Homs, loitered over the strike area in Idlib province and delivered its deadly yield. U.S. intelligence also detected the presence of individuals associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program at the Shayrat air base in the days surrounding the attack.
Dozens of people died of exposure to sarin in Khan Sheikhoun, including numerous children, officials said. Many more were injured, among them first responders.
The officials said that nothing from an array of intelligence and publicly available material provided any credence to the alternative account put forward by Syria and Russia, which claimed that routine bombing struck an opposition chemical weapons depot.
“I have personally reviewed the intelligence, and there is no doubt the Syrian regime is responsible for the decision to attack and for the attack itself,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon later in the day. He warned Syria that it would pay a “very, very, very stiff price” for further chemical attacks.
But Mattis and other officials said the U.S. government has not yet reached a consensus on whether Russia knew about the assault ahead of time.
U.S. officials suggested that it was unlikely that Russian troops, stationed at the air base that was singled out last week, would have been kept in the dark.
“We do think it is a question worth asking the Russians, about how is it possible that their forces were co-located with the forces that planned, prepared and carried out the chemical weapons attack at the same installation and did not have foreknowledge?” one senior official said.
Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict has proved to be a lifeline for Assad, who has relied on Moscow and Tehran for financial and military support.
The officials slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government for a “clear pattern of deflecting blame” for its actions and those of Assad’s forces, and for trying to use disinformation to hide the Syrian government’s role in what occurred.
“I think it’s clear that the Russians are trying to cover up what happened there,” another official said.
Moscow says it fulfilled its part of a 2013 agreement mandating that Russia oversee the destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal. On Monday, Russia’s general staff said two locations where chemical weapons might remain are in territory controlled by Syrian rebels.
But Tillerson told reporters that last week’s attack with a suspected nerve agent shows that Moscow either did not take its obligations seriously or was incompetent. In either case, he added, the distinction “doesn’t much matter to the dead.”