Developments in the wake of Syrian President Bashar Assad's April 4 chemical attack, and the United States’ subsequent missile attack, raise many questions. Why did Assad launch this chemical attack? Was he unaware of the probable consequences? Did he launch the attack without coordination with Tehran?
After the occupation of Aleppo, it was often asserted that Assad had cemented his position. Even the tone in the West changed. But over the past month, the Syrian opposition launched attacks inside Damascus, inflicting heavy blows to Assad’s forces even in Hama.
The military balance began changing and the Assad dictatorship, once again facing an existential crisis, resorted to inhumane measures and massacring innocent women and children.
From August 2013 onward, 26 chemicals attacks have been identified and registered in Syria, according to the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. Five cases in 2013, eight in 2014, 11 attacks in 2016 and two such cases in 2017.
Assad’s latest chemical attack has not been registered by this body, and it is a known fact that such statistics are always very conservative.
Nasr al-Hariri, head of the Syrian opposition delegation in Geneva, said the number of chemical attacks has reached 160, with Assad using sarin, chlorine and a variety of other agents.
Seeing the international community had no appetite to respond to the 2013 chemical attack on East Ghouta near Damascus, Assad was emboldened to resort to further such measures. That came despite his signature on an accord banning the use of chemical weapons.
The Obama years were riddled with concessions to Iran and silence in the face of crimes in Syria - and others around the region by Tehran and its proxy forces - all to preserve nuclear negotiations with the mullahs. However, those years are over.
Assad and his allies miscalculated how the international status quo shifted after President Trump assumed office. We are witnessing a new understanding by policymakers in Washington over how the policy of rapprochement and concessions to Tehran failed miserably. This is the very change that Assad and Tehran sought to test in practice, and it came at a heavy price.
The Trump administration did announce that America's first priority was the war against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). However, due to Assad’s horrific crime against women and children, remaining silent became impossible, Trump made clear that his mentality had changed.
Assad’s chemical attack left 100 killed, including 36 innocent children, and 400 others injured. Radar systems indicated the attack was carried out by Assad’s forces. Sarin gas was in use despite the 2014 agreement calling for its removal. It was clear that the previous agreement was nothing but a deception to relieve Assad of any accountability.
It's not the first time America has seen a shift of this nature. In World War II, when Hitler was advancing throughout Europe, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called on U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to intervene. Roosevelt at first refused, and yet Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor forced America to take action.
At times, developments are out of our control. There are situations that force us to make difficult decisions that impact our national and security interests. The Trump administration’s reaction bears not only a military message but a deep political and strategic one. The policy of engaging Tehran’s theocracy and appeasing its rulers failed miserably.
What's more, the change in policy sends a message to Iran as well. And it looks like they received it.
“The enemy aimed to weaken the spirit of our people, officials, and military commanders. Some say America’s attack on Syria is possible in other places of the world,” said Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“The main objective of this attack is not Syria, but Iran,” said Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Kayhan daily, which is known as Khamenei’s mouthpiece.
Opposition in the region took heart, and encouraged the U.S. to maintain course. “After years of appeasement of the Iranian and Syrian regimes, which had no outcome but more war crimes and more crimes against humanity, the disabling of the chemical centers, bases, and the machinery of war and repression in Syria must be completed by expelling the Iranian regime, the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its mercenary forces from Syria, Iraq, and Yemen,” said Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
“Eviction of the godfather and main state-sponsor of terrorism in today's world is requisite to global and regional peace and tranquility and the uprooting of fundamentalism and terrorism," Rajavi added.
Americans would be right to heed her advice.
Shahriar Kia (@Shahriarkia) is an Iranian dissident and a political analyst in the Middle East. He is a member of the Iranian opposition (PMOI / MEK), and a graduate of North Texas University.
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