US strikes Syrian airfield in first
direct military action against Assad
Dozens of Tomahawk missiles have been
launched at a government airfield in the wake of the Syrian leader’s use of
chemical weapons against civilians
Spencer Ackerman and Ed Pilkington in New York, Ben Jacobs
and Julian Borger in Washington
Friday 7 April 2017 04.06 BST First published on Friday 7
April 2017 02.35 BST
The US military has launched a heavy cruise missile attack
on a Syrian airfield, in retaliation against Bashar al-Assad’s latest
indiscriminate use of chemical weapons.
Donald Trump, who for years signaled his comfort with
leaving Assad in power, abruptly switched course after seeing images of
children gassed to death in Idlib province after Assad unleashed sarin gas on
civilians.
The strike, which comprised 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles
launched from the guided-missile destroyers USS Ross and Porter in the eastern
Mediterranean, marked the first time the US has become a direct combatant
against the Syrian regime.
An airfield at al-Shayrat near Homs was targeted, signaling
a limited initial engagement on a target the military said was used to launch
the sarin attack.
Though the US did target some of Syria’s formidable air
defenses, it did not do so largely beyond al-Shayrat or in a sustained barrage,
as it would typically do before launching a concerted airpower campaign.
Instead, the Pentagon said, it attacked “aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters,
petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense
systems, and radars” at the airfield.
Though Trump lacked both congressional and international
authorization for the strike, prominent US politicians immediately lent him
political cover.
Trump said Thursday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort that he
had ordered a “targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the
chemical attack was launched”.
After a frantic day of consultation with his military
advisers, including defense secretary James Mattis and national security
adviser HR McMaster, Trump said it was a “vital national security interest” of
the US to prevent “the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons” after
previous efforts at changing Assad’s behavior “had failed, and failed very
dramatically”.
Yet Trump also called on the international community to
“join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end
terrorism of all kinds and all types”, leaving it unclear whether the US
objective was retaliation for the sarin gas assault, destruction of Assad’s
chemical stockpiles, or a push to oust Assad from power.
For its part, the Pentagon said the strike “was intended to
deter the regime from using chemical weapons again”.
On Tuesday, dozens of civilians, including 10 children, were
killed, apparently by a nerve agent attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun, in a
region held by the rebels who oppose Assad’s regime.
Trump had already warned that his view had been changed by
the shocking television images of children. And the attack came – even while he
was hosting the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in
Florida.
The attack was apparently launched at about 8.40pm eastern
standard time – 4.40am in Syria.
In 2013 Assad’s forces used chemical weapons, including
sarin and chlorine, killing more than 1,000 people. Barack Obama threatened
military action over Assad’s use of sarin, an illegal weapon, but the US
congress balked and Russia intervened to make a deal in which Assad handed over
stockpiles of weapons.
The Tomahawks used are sophisticated missiles with the
ability to shift course in the air, making them analogous to drones on a
one-way mission. Syria’s formidable, Russian-supplied air defenses, largely
along the Mediterranean coast, have long prompted warnings from US military
officials against attacking Assad.
Since Russia sent aircraft, troops and personnel to bolster
Assad in late 2015, the Syrian president’s fortunes have improved dramatically,
and has retaken territory from the beleaguered and fractious armed opposition.
The Russian presence has raised the stakes dramatically for US military
planners, as the prospect of accidentally killing Russian personnel and
sparking a larger war with a nuclear power reduces the US room for maneuver.
But the military, according to Pentagon spokesman Captain
Jeff Davis, notified Russian forces before the strike, using a communications
channel set up to ensure US pilots who attack Islamic State targets in eastern
Syria do not accidentally come into conflict with their Russian counterparts.
It is likely that Russia would have passed the warning onto
their Syrian allies. The US has roughly 1,000 troops in Syria, who may be
placed at risk as the result of the strike.
“We are assessing the results of the strike. Initial
indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian
aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat airfield, reducing
the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons”, Davis said.
Davis said the Shayrat base had been used to store chemical
weapons used by the regime until 2013, when a deal was struck with the US and
Russia to remove its declared arsenal. He said it was used to deliver the
chemical weapons dropped on Khan Sheikhun on Tuesday, but could not confirm
whether any chemical weapons were still at the site. However, he stressed that
the targets were chosen carefully to avoid the risk of hitting those weapons.
“The places we targeted were the things that made the
airfield operate. It’s the petroleum facilities, it’s the aircraft radar, what
they use for take-off and landing, as well as air-defence radar,” Davis said.
“It’s the sites that are specific to making it operate, as well as hangars and
aircraft themselves.”
US defense analysts have warned for years of attacking Assad
without a plan for what it seeks to achieve or what a post-Assad Syria might
look like.
Davis emphasized precautions the US military took to avoid
killing Russian personnel occupying their own compound at Shayrat, citing the
early-morning time of the attack and the choice of targets unlikely to have
people inside. All the aircraft attacked were Syrian, Davis said, with Russian
aircraft unharmed.
Neither the US Congress nor the United Nations have
authorized war against Assad, who has brutalized his people but not the US.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, an international-law scholar at the University of Notre
Dame, said the US did not have a legal basis for military action.
“Under international law, he has zero right to attack Assad.
It would be a reprisal attack. You won’t find any international law specialists
who will find a legal right to carry out a reprisal”, O’Connell said.
It has been a dramatic about-face for Trump.
For years, Trump rejected any attack on Assad as a strategic
folly, despite repeated chemical assaults of the sort that prompted Thursday’s
missile strikes. Following Russia’s intervention in the conflict, Trump
attacked rival Hillary Clinton’s openness to strikes against Assad’s forces as
inviting a devastating conflict with Russia. Just days ago, his secretary of
state and UN ambassador made statements indicating Trump was prepared to let
Assad – who in November called Trump a “natural ally” – remain in power.
But earlier on Thursday, following Trump’s public anger at
Assad for the sarin assault, secretary of state Rex Tillerson said “there is no
role for [Assad] to govern the Syrian people” and called on Russia, where
Tillerson will travel next week, to “consider carefully” its sponsorship of the
Syrian dictator.
Tillerson suggested “steps are under way” to rally an
international coalition to remove Assad diplomatically, a position long
thwarted by Moscow and Beijing. Chinese president Xi Jinping is meeting with
Trump at Mar-a-Lago in what
Longtime Syria hawks – and Trump critics – John McCain and
Lindsey Graham rallied behind Trump in the pursuit of an attack they have urged
for years.
Trump and the military “sent an important message the United
States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin’s
Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs”,
Graham and McCain said in a joint statement.
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