MESOP’S TODAY’S INSIDE SYRIA : U.N. chemical weapons report seems to implicate the Syrian regime

The United Nations has released a long-awaited report investigating the August 21 chemical weapons attack outside the Syrian capital of Damascus. According to the U.N. investigators there was “clear and convincing evidence” that chemical weapons were used “on a relatively large scale, resulting in numerous casualties.” While the mandate of the investigators did not permit them to determine who carried out the attacks, the evidence largely implicated the Syrian government. In particular, the munitions, identified as surface-to-surface rockets, and launchers, as well as the direction from which the rockets had been launched, points to government culpability.

For the first time publicly, Israel has called for the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren said, “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”