Mattis won’t rule out airstrike over alleged Syria chemical attack

Defense Secretary James Mattis said Monday that he would not rule out a possible airstrike on Syria in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack on residents over the weekend.

“I don’t rule out anything right now,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon prior to meeting with the emir of Qatar.

President Bashar Assad is suspected of a chemical gas attack over the weekend that killed at least 70, including women and children, in Douma, Syria.

{mosads}

The State Department said Monday that the symptoms of victims were “consistent with an asphyxiation agent and of a nerve agent of some type,” Reuters reported.

Mattis also indicated that Russia may have had some responsibility in the attack.

Under a deal between the United States and Russia, reached through the United Nations, Syria’s chemical weapons were to be removed from the country by 2014.

“The first thing we have to look at is why are chemical weapons still being used at all when Russia was the framework guarantor of removing all the chemical weapons,” Mattis said.

“And so, working with our allies and our partners from NATO to Qatar and elsewhere, we are going to address this issue.”

Following Mattis’s remarks, President Trump announced that he would decide the U.S. response to the “heinous” chemical weapons attack in Syria “over the next 24 to 48 hours.”

Trump said he plans to meet with his National Security Council later Monday to determine who is responsible and form a retaliation plan.

He later added that a decision would come “probably by the end of today.” 

“If it’s the Russians, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out,” he said.

Trump, last April, responded militarily to reported chemical weapons use, ordering the U.S. military to launch Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield believed to be the launching point of a similar chemical weapons attack.