Trump Signals No Syria Strategy Change After Missile Strike

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that Assad’s government “must never use chemical weapons again, ever” and that Iran and Russia bore responsibility for propping up the Syrian leader and perpetuating the bloody six-year-old conflict there, Bloomberg reported.

“The United States took a very measured step last night,” Haley told a meeting of the Security Council on Friday. “We are prepared to do more.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a cruise missile strike in Syria after accusing Assad of using deadly sarin gas against civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun was more a warning than a signal of a major shift to a strategy of toppling the regime. It also deepened tensions with Russia, sending a message to President Vladimir Putin that Trump’s expressed desire to improve U.S. relations with Moscow has limits.

Administration officials indicated that the U.S. approach in Syria, which includes air cover for groups battling Islamic State forces and hundreds of ground troops training and supporting them, isn’t expanding. Trump’s position, like that of former President Barack Obama, has been that the fight against Islamic State is the first priority, and that the fate of the Assad regime will be up to some political process involving Syrian rebel groups at a later date.

Proportionate Response

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in remarks echoed by Haley, said Thursday night that the missile strike on one airbase from which Syrian government forces launched a chemical attack this week was a proportionate response to the use of prohibited weapons.

“I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today,” Tillerson said at a briefing for reporters after the U.S. strike. “There’s been no change in that status.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer reinforced that on Friday. “First and foremost, the president believes that the Syrian government, the Assad regime, should at the minimum agree to abide by the agreements they made not to use chemical weapons,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the U.S. will announce “in the near future” fresh sanctions on Syria aimed at deterring countries and companies from doing business with Assad’s government.

Trump ran for president on a promise to focus on U.S. domestic interests, criticizing the foreign entanglements of his predecessors. But when he announced the strikes late Thursday at his Palm Beach, Florida, club, where he was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said he was moved by the images of the more than 70 men, women and children who died in the April 4 gas attack.

“No child of God should ever suffer such horror,” Trump said.

He also said during his campaign that he wanted to reestablish a more cooperative relationship with Russia, particularly in the fight against Islamic State and other terrorist groups. But that goal now is threatened, as is the tenuous U.S.-Russian coordination in Syria. It’s a conflict that began with Assad cracking down on protests in Damascus, and over six years has morphed into a conflict involving the U.S., Russia, Iran and Turkey, as well as multiple extremist groups and militias backed by regional powers such as Saudi Arabia.

Russia Reacts

Russia officials said they would suspend as of Saturday military-to-military communications designed to prevent conflicts between Russian and U.S. warplanes operating in the skies over Syria. A U.S. defense official said Russia answered the phone as usual when the U.S. called on Friday.

Putin condemned the attack on the Syrian air base as an “act of aggression against a sovereign state.” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the U.S. strikes put the world’s two biggest nuclear-armed powers “on the verge of a military clash” and dashed any remaining hopes that Trump would bring an improvement in relations.

Tillerson, who’s due to meet with officials in Moscow next week, also used strong language that left no doubt about the administration’s view of the Russian president’s relationship with Assad. The secretary said Russia was “complicit” in Syria’s use of chemical weapons or “incompetent” for having failed to keep its end of a 2013 agreement that was supposed to remove Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

U.S. Investigating

Russia’s response to the airstrikes and Assad’s actions discouraged hopes they might take a new approach, he said. “I find it very disappointing but, sadly, I have to tell you not all that surprising,” Tillerson said at a briefing in Florida on Friday.

At the Pentagon, a military official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. is assessing any information that would implicate the Russians knew or assisted in the latest poison-gas attack.

The U.S. detected a drone, belonging either to the Syrian regime or Russia, flying above a nearby hospital as victims from the chemical attack poured in, the official said. About five hours later, the drone returned overhead and the hospital was struck by a Russian-made fixed-wing aircraft, the official said, adding it wasn’t clear who was operating the aircraft. The U.S. is interested in whether the hospital strike was done to potentially hide evidence of the chemical attack.

Any deeper U.S. involvement in Syria is bound to draw scrutiny from Congress. After the missile strike, lawmakers from both parties gave cautious support to Trump’s limited response. While Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have renewed their calls for the use of U.S. troops to topple Assad, most members of Congress said Trump would need their consent for a more aggressive strategy.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, one of Trump’s competitors for the Republican nomination in 2016, said Trump would need Congress to appropriate money and authorize further military action. “Congress can help guide a strategy, and that’s what we intend to do,” Rubio told reporters.