Analysts are expressing a range of concerns regarding a proposed Russian-facilitated plan designed to defuse the crisis surrounding what is widely believed to be the mass use of chemical weapons by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime, a day after President Barack Obama declared that Washington would carefully examine the plan.

It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments. But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force, particularly because Russia is one of Assad’s strongest allies.

Criticism of the proposal, which would see Syria’s vast chemical weapons arsenal subjected to international inspections and confiscation, had already begun piling up as the speech approached. Writing in Foreign Policy, Yochi Dreazen emphasized that that the plan would functionally put U.S. boots on the ground in Syria, which was exactly what U.S. policymakers had long sought to avoid. Experts are uncertain whether international inspectors could even find all of Syria’s chemical weapons facilities, many of which are movable.

Brigadier General Mustafa al-Sheikh, a Syrian army defector, told Reuters this summer that most of the chemical weapons have been transported to Alawite areas in Latakia and near the coast. Some chemical munitions remain in bases around Damascus, he said.

It is not clear that inspectors could even be safely inserted into Syria given the current conflict. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Thursday to further discuss the proposal.

[Photo: Pete Souza / Wiki Commons]