US President Barack Obama is mulling his options on dealing with Syria’s reported use of chemical weapons even as the Pentagon has communicated its readiness for all contingencies.
Obama held a meeting of his National Security Council on Saturday at which he received “a detailed review of a range of potential options he had requested be prepared for the United States and the international community to respond to the use of chemical weapons”. After deliberations with his top officials, Obama also spoke with British Prime Minister David Cameron on “possible responses by the international community” over Syrian regime’s reported use of chemical weapons against civilians near Damascus on August 21.
Although a White House statement refrained from laying out possible options, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Sunday that following the president’s directive, the US military was prepared for all contingencies. “President Obama has asked the Defense Department to prepare options for all contingencies. We have done that and we are prepared to exercise whatever option -- if he decides to employ one of those options,” Hagel said in Malaysia at the beginning of a week-long Asian tour.
An intelligence assessment of the attack as well as possible international support for a military operation and legal issues were among the factors being discussed, Hagel indicated. The White House statement confined itself to noting that “in coordination with international partners and mindful of the dozens of contemporaneous witness accounts and record of the symptoms of those killed, the US intelligence community continues to gather facts to ascertain what occurred”.
US media reports, however, listed some of the options being contemplated by Washington. Fox News reported that four US Navy Destroyers were being pre-positioned in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, adding no immediate instructions beyond deployment have been issued.
“Cruise missiles launched from US warships is an option,” The Washington Post reported, citing an unnamed defence official. “Cruise missiles, if they were deployed, would most likely be fired at Syrian military installations as a warning to the Syrian Government of US seriousness regarding chemical weapons use, rather than an attempt to immediately alter the balance in the ongoing civil war.”
Other options are said to range from sending sophisticated weapons to Syrian rebels to using US air power to establish a no-fly zone over rebel-held areas. A White House official had been quoted by other reports earlier as commenting, “We have a range of options available, and we are going to act very deliberately so that we're making decisions consistent with our national interest as well as our assessment of what can advance our objectives in Syria.”
In a surprise move, it has been revealed that Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Muallim on Thursday to press the point that the Syrian government should allow an international weapons inspection team to visit the Damascus site in question. A State Department official said that Kerry called “to make clear that if, as they claimed, the Syrian regime has nothing to hide, it should have allowed immediate and unimpeded access to the site rather than continuing to attack the affected area to block access and destroy evidence”.