Israeli officials believe that chemical weapons were used yesterday in Syria for the first time in that country’s two-year conflict, with each side blaming the other for an attack that killed at least 25 people.
Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons is thought to be the world’s largest, and last week IDF Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi warned at the annual Herzliya Conference that the Bashar al-Assad regime was preparing to deploy portions of that arsenal. The general indicated that Syria was conducting 40 to 50 aerial sorties a day, alongside efforts by Iran and Hezbollah to create a “popular army” of 50,000 to 100,000 men to promote their interests.
Opposition forces are known to be seeking to overrun Syrian army depots where the weapons are stored, but are not known to have succeeded yet.
The introduction of unconventional weapons into the Syrian conflict, if confirmed, would have domestic, regional, and global consequences.
Domestically it would mark a dramatic escalation and potentially a sign of desperation by the regime, which has seen its position erode over the past weeks and months. Substantial swaths of Syrian territory, including areas on the outskirts of Aleppo, are now under rebel control. The fear has been that as more territory was overrun, the regime would find itself in a use ’em or lose ’em situation, and would consequently activate its unconventional arsenal in a last-ditch effort to defeat the rebels.
Regionally, the willingness of Syrian combatants to use unconventional weapons against their opponents would heighten fears that those weapons will either be transferred to the regime’s Hezbollah allies for use against Israel or be captured by rebels, who Israeli officials believe are also prepared to use them against the Jewish state. Rebels earlier this week captured an army intelligence base close to the Israeli border. Elements of the opposition, which is increasingly dominated by the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front, have directly threatened to attack Israel.
Lebanon and Jordan — both of which have reasons to worry that the war will increasingly spill across their borders — also have reason to fear an escalation to unconventional weaponry. Speaking at the same conference as Kochavi last week, Washington Institute Syria expert Andrew Tabler predicted that as the scale and scope of the anti-Assad rebellion widens, so too will the spillover effect. He noted that the Zaatari refugee camp, inhabited by 100,000 Syrians, is already effectively Jordan’s fifth or sixth-largest city.
Globally, the use of chemical weapons will draw focus toward President Barack Obama’s “red line” regarding Syria, under which Obama committed the U.S. to action should the regime introduce chemical weapons into the conflict.
[Photo: Vir Vikram Singh / Picasa]