“Insiders in Washington are aware that Trump’s officials are less tolerant of Syrian officials getting away with killing Syrian civilians, especially with chemical weapons.”
Yesterday, the United States Treasury Department announced one of the department’s largest ever set of sanctions against 271 Syrian scientists and other government officials suspected of developing and employing the sarin gas that was utilized in an attack on Syrian civilians.
The April 4th attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun (population 48,975) resulted in a death toll of 87, including many children. The town in western Syria is located in the Maarrat al-Nu’man District, which has been held by a series of anti-government forces since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War. The current rebel faction in control of the area is the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, which also has a history involving chemical weapons.
The Treasury Department sanctions targeted the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC). These sanctions include a total freeze of all assets in the United States for the 271 Syrians who were added to the blacklist. The sanctions also prohibit any American individual or corporation from conducting any business with the sanctioned people. The SSRC is Syria’s leading scientific research center, with extensive connections to the military of Syria.
According to the Treasury Department, the SSRC was leading the move to develop chemical weapons for the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. President George W. Bush’s administration had previously placed sanctions on the SSRC in 2005 for their role in the development of weapons of mass destruction. The Obama administration sanctioned some individuals and companies for supporting the SSRC in 2016, with more sanctions following in January of this year.
The sanctions follow the Trump administration’s launching of Tomahawk cruise missiles against the Syrian airfield that the chemical weapons attack was allegedly launched from. Assad insists that the chemical weapons attack was a total fabrication designed to give Western powers the excuse to attack his country.
The Russian government has claimed that Syrian airstrikes hit a rebel chemical weapons cache, which resulted in the civilians’ deaths. Some have even claimed that no chemical weapons attack occurred at all, including Professor Theodore A. Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Regardless, after the sanctions were announced, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said,
“The United States is sending a strong message with this action, that we will hold the entire Assad regime accountable for these blatant human rights violations in order to deter the spread of these types of barbaric chemical weapons.”
Nadia Bilbassy, the Washington Bureau Chief for Al Arabiya news, said,
“There is no doubt that the Donald Trump administration’s policies on the Middle East differ drastically from the previous Obama administration… Insiders in Washington are aware that Trump’s officials are less tolerant of Syrian officials getting away with killing Syrian civilians, especially with chemical weapons. Today’s sanctions are an example of that.”
