Syria and weapons of mass destruction deals with the research, manufacture, stockpiling and alleged use by
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
of
weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natu ...
, which include chemical and nuclear weapons.
On 14 September 2013, the United States and Russia announced
an agreement for the elimination of Syria's chemical weapon stockpiles by June 2014.
In October 2013, the
OPCW-UN Joint Mission destroyed all of Syria's declared chemical weapons manufacturing and mixing equipment. Several months later, Syria disclosed that it maintained a
ricin chemical weapons program, which the Syrian government claims has fallen into the hands of
Syrian Opposition forces in the east of the country.
The following month Syria, further disclosed that it had 4 more previously hidden chemical weapons production sites. The
Israeli intelligence community
The Israeli Intelligence Community is made up of Aman (military intelligence), Mossad (overseas intelligence) and Shabak (internal security).
Current agencies
* Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman): the supreme military-intelligence bran ...
believes the Syrian government retains several tons of chemical weapons.
Syria sought to develop nuclear weapons with help from
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...
, but its
plutonium
Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibi ...
production
reactor was destroyed by the
Israeli Air Force
The Israeli Air Force (IAF; he, זְרוֹעַ הָאֲוִיר וְהֶחָלָל, Zroa HaAvir VeHahalal, tl, "Air and Space Arm", commonly known as , ''Kheil HaAvir'', "Air Corps") operates as the aerial warfare branch of the Israel Defens ...
in 2007 (see
Operation Orchard
Operation Outside the Box ( he, מבצע מחוץ לקופסה, ''Mivtza MiHutz LaKufsa''), also known as Operation Orchard ( he, מבצע בוסתן, ''Mivtza Bustan''), was an Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear reactor,[International Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 ...]
(IAEA) remains open, amid Syria's failure to respond to the IAEA's questions about the destroyed facility, that the IAEA concluded was "very likely" a nuclear reactor, including the whereabouts of the reactor's nuclear fuel. In January 2015, it was reported that the Syrian government is suspected to be building a nuclear plant in
Al-Qusayr, Syria
Al-Qusayr ( ar, القصير, al-Quṣayr, , Literary Arabic: ) is a city in western Syria, administratively part of the Homs Governorate. It is located about south of Homs and is situated in a mountainous area overlooking Syria's border with ...
.
Background
Following the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights during the 1967
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states (primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, S ...
, and South Lebanon in 1978, the Syrian government has regarded Israeli military power as a threat to Syrian security.
Syria first acquired chemical weapons from Egypt in 1973 as a military deterrent against Israel before launching the
Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from October 6 to 25, 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by E ...
.
Despite the fact that Syrian officials did not explicitly declare the chemical weapons capability, they implied it through speeches and in addition warned of retaliations. Internal Syrian chemical weapons capability may have been developed with indirect Russian, German, Chinese technical and logistical support. It is likely Syria imported dual-use chemical weapon precursors and production equipment from West Europe, China and North Korea.
[
In 1997, security analyst Zuhair Diab, who worked for the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat from 1981 to 1985, wrote that Israeli nuclear weapons were a primary motivation for the Syrian chemical weapons program. Their rivalry with Iraq and Turkey were also important considerations.]
On 23 July 2012 Syria implicitly confirmed it possessed a stockpile of chemical weapons which it says are reserved for national defense against foreign countries.
During the Syrian Civil War, in August 2012, the Syrian military restarted chemical weapons testing at a base on the outskirts of Aleppo
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. Chemical weapons were a major point of discussion between the Syrian government and world leaders, with military intervention being considered by the West as a potential consequence of the use of such weapons.
Chemical weapons
Syria's chemical weapons program
Syria's chemical weapons
A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as a ...
program began in the 1970s with weapons and training from Egypt and the Soviet Union, with production of chemical weapons in Syria beginning in the mid-1980s. In the July 2007 Syrian arms depot explosion, there were suggestions that the incident involved a secret chemical weapons facility.
Prior to September 2013 Syria was one of a handful of states which had not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, and had not publicly admitted to possessing chemical weapons, although Western intelligence services believed it to hold a massive stockpile.Congressional Research Service
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a public policy research institute of the United States Congress. Operating within the Library of Congress, it works primarily and directly for members of Congress and their committees and staff on a c ...
, 12 September 2013
Syria's Chemical Weapons: Issues for Congress
In September 2013, French intelligence put the Syrian stockpile at 1,000 tonnes, including Yperite, VX and "several hundred tonnes of sarin". After international condemnation of the August 2013 Ghouta chemical attack
The Ghouta chemical attack, was a chemical attack carried out by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in the early hours of 21 August 2013 in Ghouta, Syria during the Syrian civil war. Two opposition-controlled areas in the su ...
, for which Western states held the Syrian government responsible (whilst Syria and Russia held the Syrian rebels of the Syrian civil war responsible), in September 2013 Syria joined the Convention (formally acceding on 14 October), as part of its agreement to the destruction of its chemical weapons under the supervision of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is an intergovernmental organisation and the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which entered into force on 29 April 1997. The OPCW, with its 193 member ...
. In October 2013, the OPCW found a total of 1,300 tons of chemical weapons.
On 16 October 2013, the OPCW and the United Nations formally established a joint mission to oversee the elimination of the Syrian chemical weapons program by mid-2014, which was declared completed in January 2016. According to Reuters, a chemical analysis done in January 2018 on the destroyed stockpile samples match some chemical markers such as hexamine, unique to the Syrian recipe for sarin, with samples from the 21 August 2013 Ghouta attack and also from interviewees' samples from Khan Sheikhoun and Khan Al-Assal attack sites.
Syrian opposition chemical weapons capability
The Syrian government claims that the opposition has the capacity to launch large chemical attacks such as those seen at Ghouta. Sources such as the United States and Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
disagree, claiming there is no significant evidence the opposition has any significant chemical weapons capability.
A Syrian military source told SANA
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, the official news agency in Syria, that the Syrian Army seized two containers with sarin together with automatic rifles, pistols and homemade bombs (IEDs) in a rebel hideout in the al-Faraieh neighborhood (also spelled Al-Faraya) of the city of Hama on 1 June 2013, which has been the scene of fighting between government troops and armed opposition groups. The Syrian government declared the two cylinders "as abandoned chemical weapons" and told the OPCW
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is an intergovernmental organisation and the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which entered into force on 29 April 1997. The OPCW, with its 193 member ...
that "the items did not belong to" them. On 14 June 2014, the Joint OPCW-UN Mission confirmed that the cylinders contained sarin. On 7 July 2014, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon informed the UN Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
about the findings.
In December 2013 investigative journalist Seymour Hersh
Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American Investigative journalism, investigative journalist and political writer.
Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam Wa ...
controversially reported that multiple U.S. intelligence agencies had allegedly produced top secret assessments in the summer of 2013, regarding Syrian rebel's supposed chemical weapons capabilities. The alleged assessments were said by Hersh to have concluded that the Al-Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI; ar, القاعدة في العراق, al-Qā'idah fī al-ʿIrāq) or Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia ( ar, القاعدة في بلاد الرافدين, al-Qā'idah fī Bilād ar-Rāfidayn), officially known as ''Tanzim Qaidat a ...
were capable of acquiring, producing, and deploying sarin gas "in quantity". A spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence replied that Hersh's report was "simply false."
On 8 April 2016, a spokesman for the rebel group said that "weapons not authorized for use in these types of confrontations" had been used against Kurdish militia and civilians in the Sheikh Maqsood
Sheikh Maqsood ( ar, ٱلشَّيْخ مَقْصُود, aš-Šayḵ Maqṣūd, ku, Şêxmeqsûd, شێخ مەقسوود, ), sometimes spelled al-Sheikh Maqsoud, Maqsud or Maksud, is a Kurdish-majority neighborhood in the city of Aleppo, Syria. ...
neighborhood in Aleppo
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. He stated that "One of our commanders has unlawfully used a type of weapon that is not included in our list". He did not specify what substances were used but, according to the Kurdish Red Crescent
The Kurdish Red Crescent ( ku, Heyva Sor a Kurd; ar, الهلال الأحمر الكردي) is a humanitarian nonprofit organisation operating mainly in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. It is the primary provider of medic ...
, the symptoms were consistent with the use of chlorine gas
Chlorine is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate betwee ...
or other agents. Welat Memo, a physician with the Kurdish Red Crescent, said that the people affected are "vomiting and having difficulty in breathing." Jaysh al-Islam subsequently clarified that it was referring to "modified Grad rockets
The BM-21 "Grad" (russian: БМ-21 "Град", lit= hail) is a self-propelled 122 mm multiple rocket launcher designed in the Soviet Union. The system and the M-21OF rocket were first developed in the early 1960s, and saw their first comb ...
," not chemical weapons.
ISIS mustard gas use
The BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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reported in September 2015 that, according to an unnamed U.S. official, the U.S. believes that
at least four times in Syria and Iraq, that ISIS had probably manufactured the mustard agent itself, and probably had an active chemical weapons research team. Mustard agent is a relatively simple chemical weapon to manufacture, and given the Syrian government's chemical-weapons disarmament, analysts deemed it unlikely that ISIS had acquired the mustard agent from seizing a Syrian government cache. The BBC further stated that a BBC team on the Turkey-Syria border had seen corroborating evidence.
Syria is generally considered not to have biological weapons.