The same accountability apparatus that was supposed to stop Syrian dictator Bashar Assad from committing a weapons of mass destruction massacre is still being employed to stop Iran from getting a nuke. Will American foreign policy makers learn from Obama’s failures in Syria and change course with Iran?
Conservative Review, April 6, 2017 – Syrian President Bashar Assad has committed what appears to be another massive chemical bombing attack against his own people. Earlier this week, his warplanes bombed opposition-held territory, killing untold amounts of women and children and injuring over 100 more individuals. Videos have surfaced on social media showcasing the utter devastation. It’s clear that the conflict in Syria has become a tragedy of genocidal proportions, and there is no end in sight to this gruesome situation.
But WMD attacks like this were never supposed to happen. Obama assured us that such an attack was no longer possible.
Back in 2012, then-President Obama gave his infamous “red line“ address:
We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.
Just 366 days later, in the early hours of the morning on August 21, 2013, Assad launched a massive chemical bombing attack in opposition held-territory in the Damascus suburbs, completely ignoring the warning he received from President Obama. Some estimates say that over 1,500 people were killed in one fell swoop, and thousands more were injured.
One year later, as part of the former administration’s lead-from-behind strategy, President Obama struck a deal with Russia in 2014 to remove weapons of mass destruction from Syria. Moscow was tasked with taking the lead to remove all of the chemical weapons in the possession of Assad.
Such a strategy should have raised major red flags. Russia, after all, was and remains a key ally to Assad. How could they be trusted to oversee the removal of weapons from their ally? Yet, Obama did not appear the least bit concerned in letting Russia do the heavy lifting. He even had the United Nations on their side, too.
Leading from behind must end to protect America’s future.
The United Nations later confirmed with complete certainty that Assad no longer had WMDs in his possession. Mission accomplished, they said.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a United Nations body tasked with inspection and removal of prohibited arms, also congratulated itself for the successful undertaking.
“Never before has an entire arsenal of a category of weapons of mass destruction been removed from a country experiencing a state of internal armed conflict. And this has been accomplished within very demanding and tight timeframes,” said OPCW chief Ahmet Üzümcü.
As it turns out, the United Nations was historically wrong. Untold numbers of slain women and children now line the streets in Syria, having fallen victim to a chemical attack that we were assured could not happen.
Perhaps most alarming about this strategic failure is that Obama and the U.N. employed almost an identical strategy when it came to the Iran nuclear deal.
As part of the nuclear deal, Russia (a close ally to Iran) was tasked with shipping low grade nuclear material to Iran in exchange for the regime sending tons of reactor coolant back to Moscow. The United Nations, which botched its oversight of the Syrian chemical weapons transfer, is currently in charge of inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In the end, the same actors who said with absolute certainty that Assad no longer had chemical weapons are now telling the international community that Iran is not developing a nuclear bomb. The IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear inspection agency, has “verified compliance,” we’re told.
The same barriers put in place to keep Iran in check were knocked over when it came to stopping Assad from slaughtering his own people. The Iran deal provided a windfall for Tehran that empowered the regime with countless billions in unfrozen assets. Iran continues its rise throughout the region as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. Currently, there are zero American inspectors on the compliance team.
President Trump must not rely upon the same actors to tell us whether or not Iran is in compliance. For all we know, the country could very well be developing a nuclear bomb under our noses. The international monitoring — which were lauded with “100%” certainly — on Syria failed, due to an incompetent administration, an unreliable United Nations, and an irresponsible Russia. The same checks and balances may collapse for Iran, too. Leading from behind must end to protect America’s future.
