The US must show evidence of Syria's use of chemical weapons
If, on the other hand, arms are being sent to Syria as part of a wider strategic war, Washington should be upfront about it
In late April, one US intelligence official told the McClatchy news agency that they had "low or moderate confidence" that the Assad regime had used sarin gas on a small scale. Not only did the plethora of US intelligence agencies differ in their assessments, but the White House itself acknowledged that "the chain of custody [of samples] is not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what conditions".
Two months on, the US intelligence community now believes that the Assad regime "has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times over the last year", and that intelligence officials had "high confidence" in this finding. A Damascene conversion, if you will.
Naturally, the cynical view is that the White House has simply pressured its intelligence community to produce a new assessment, not on the basis of new evidence, but in response to the shifting military balance within Syria, the greater involvement of Iran and Hezbollah in key battles such as that at Qusair, and pressure from European allies like France and Britain, which collected the original samples from Syria and shared them with the US.
For over a year, the Obama administration has desperately sought to avoid the mistakes made by the US in Iraq a decade ago. Although it has facilitated the shipment of some weapons, it has otherwise proceeded with extreme caution. President Obama overruled nearly all of his top national security advisers last summer when he rejected a plan to meaningfully arm the opposition. If the US goal was a pretext for intervention, it had its pick of massacres and red lines over the past two years. It is unlikely that Obama would now take the risk of brazenly manipulating intelligence, or that he could do so without provoking a flurry of leaks from within the intelligence community.
There is only one way to clear this up. That is for the White House to release as much evidence as it responsibly can, spell out its claims about where, when, and how chemical weapons were used, and, most importantly, explain what information it received between April and June which led to this change in its position.
Intelligence agencies cannot function without protecting their sources. But they could release some samples to neutral scientific bodies for further testing, clarify how they have verified the previously uncertain chain of custody, go into detail on their reasons for concluding that the regime has full control of its chemical weapons, describe any intercept or other intelligence which demonstrates the regime ordering use of chemical weapons, and be open and honest about any remaining disagreements between different intelligence agencies within the US and between allies.
Some people's conspiratorial mindset and misreading of American intentions in Syria means that even the strongest evidence would be disregarded. But this is not a reason to opt for opacity and elision.
If western powers want to send arms to Syria to counteract Iranian influence as part of a wider strategic war, they should simply say so. Couching this policy shift in terms of chemical weapons could have pernicious long-term consequences. It is clear that the Iraq war did irreparable damage to public confidence in intelligence assessments and policymaking, to the point where it constrained future decision-makers and dealt an enduring moral blow to the global standing of western foreign policies. It is incumbent on this generation of policymakers that they demonstrate the transparency and honesty that was so lacking a decade ago. "Trust us" will no longer cut it.
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