The Obama administration appears convinced that the Syrian regime rather than the opposition conducted the chemical-weapons strike on East Ghouta. The basis for the administration’s conclusion appears to be intercepted communication, method of delivery, and the behavior of the Syrian government after the fact.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, however, denies the attack, and German intelligence suggests the president himself did not order the attacks. If that is true does it exculpate Assad and should it immunize him from retaliation?
The answer to that is: absolutely not. Too often, rogue regimes seek to maintain plausible deniability. They seek to strike their targets, and then throw up enough smoke in order to avoid accountability.
Take Iran, for example. In 1982, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini moved the Office of Liberation Movements—the predecessor to the Qods Force—from Tehran and into the home of Grand Ayatollah Husayn Ali Montazeri. If the group operated from a private house, then the Iranian government could shrug its collective shoulders every time it sponsored a terrorist attack and claim that the government itself had no responsibility.
In 1989, the West debated Iranian culpability for the murders in downtown Vienna of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, a dissident Iranian Kurd, and his entire delegation. The Austrian police let the hit squad go, and the perpetrators later received promotions in Tehran and within the Qods Force for a job well done.
Senior Iranian officials also plotted the 1992 Mykonos Café assassinations in Berlin and the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires the same year. Two years later, it was the AMIA bombing, and two years later Khobar Towers. In each case, the Iranians sought to maintain plausible deniability. The same holds true for whether or not the Iranian leadership gave Hezbollah a direct order in 2006 to launch its war with Israel. Never mind that Hezbollah terrorists are trained by–and in some cases in–Iran, utilize Iranian weaponry, and—as I saw at the Hezbollah museum in Mlitta, Lebanon—have photographs of Ayatollahs Khomeini and his successor Ali Khamenei in their bunkers.
For too long, American policymakers have looked for reasons to exculpate dictators rather than hold them to account. It is behavior Iran and its allies know well, and from which they seek full advantage. How ironic it is that the same U.S. government which would hold parents responsible for unsecured guns or for providing alcohol to a minor who subsequently gets into an accident would bend over backwards to avoid punishing a dictator who acquires chemical weapons which have only a single purpose. When a regime uses chemical weapons, there should be no mitigating factors. Let’s put the carefully constructed myth of Assad as a Western educated eye doctor or reformer to bed. He is one thing only: a murderer. It is time to hold Assad personally accountable.
