Tabnak – Less than three months after the US targeted an airbase inside Syria with the pretext that it was used to conduct a chemical attack, the White House issued a warning today, claiming that the Syrian government is preparing for another such attack. Could it be just an excuse for a US military action against Damascus?
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed in a Monday statement that the US had "identified potential preparations” for an attack "that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.” He threatened that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian military would "pay a heavy price” if they went ahead with the alleged plan.
However, the Associated Press cited anonymous US State Department officials who would "typically” be consulted before such statements are made as saying that they had been caught "completely off guard” by Spicer’s statement and that they had come to know about it only after it was released.
The AP report also said that the content of Spicer’s statement "didn’t appear to be discussed in advance with other national security agencies.”
Politico news website believes that the public warning was seen as highly unusual -- reflecting both "confidence” in the intelligence information suggesting that another attack might be imminent and a willingness to take military action should the warning not be heeded.
A senior administration official said to Politico that Donald Trump and his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, were involved in the decision to issue a public warning.
In a separate report, The Financial Times indicates the unusual nature of the recent statement, saying that "the warning was also unusual for the White House given that Mr. Trump frequently argues that the US should not telegraph any potential military operations.”
In a quick reaction to the issue, a senior Russian lawmaker dismissed the US warning as an "unprecedented provocation," and the Kremlin called the accusations against the Syrian government "unacceptable."
According to the CBS News, Frants Klintsevich, first deputy chairman of the defense and security committee at the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, accused the US of "preparing a new attack on the positions of Syrian forces." In comments to RIA Novosti, he added: "Preparations for a new cynical and unprecedented provocation are underway."
Speaking later in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Moocow considers "such threats against the Syrian leadership to be unacceptable."
It should be noted that on April 4, over 80 people died in an incident involving chemicals in the town of Khan Shaykhun in the western Idlib Province of Syria.
At the time, Western countries blamed the Syrian government for what they said was a chemical attack, and days later, the US used it as a pretext to fire 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield in the central province of Homs. US officials claimed that the alleged Khan Shaykhun gas attack had been launched from that airfield.
All in all, it seems that the US is once again resorting to the same scenario to increase the pressures on the Syrian government and/or maybe to conduct a military action against Assad’s government.
