More Syrian Regime Chemical Weapons Attacks; Russia Defends Syria

           The Russian Federation vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution last week to investigate the latest accusation of the use of chemical weapons of mass destruction by the Baathist Syrian regime of Bashar Assad against the Syrian people in that country’s civil war.

In the meantime, a separate UN investigative body determined that both the Assad regime and the “Islamic State” used chemical weapons in Syria earlier this year.  The Syrian government has repeatedly used chemical weapons against civilian targets, in addition to bombing civilian areas indiscriminately with conventional weapons.  It has also deliberately targeted civilian targets, such as hospitals and aid convoys.

Russia’s Security Council latest veto is the ninth time it has blocked a measure to investigate the use of such weapons in Syria.  It attempts to cast doubt on the allegations as an excuse to oppose taking any meaningful action to stop the chemical attacks.  Russia supports terrorist sponsor Assad because Syria hosts a Russian military base on the Mediterranean Sea and in order to oppose the interests of the United States.  

Syria’s five-year old civil war has claimed at least a half million lives and produced millions of refugees, which has caused the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.  Both non-Islamist Muslim rebels, such as Syrian Arabs and Kurds, who are opposed to the tyranny of the Assad regime and Islamists like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, who are attempting to take advantage of the chaos are fighting the Syrian government.  The non-Islamists are backed by an international coalition led by the U.S., while the Assad regime is supported by Russian and Iranian forces, as well as by the Iranian-sponsored Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization, Hezbollah.