海角大神

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Syria has missed today's deadline for giving up another portion of its entire chemical weapons arsenal, raising alarm that President Bashar al-Assad will renege on the agreement that curbed a potential US military strike last summer.

Syria delivered the most dangerous components 鈥� sarin, mustard, and VX gases 鈥� in early January, about a week after the deadline. It was supposed to hand over the "less dangerous" components today.聽

"They're not going to make that timeline either," Michael Luhan, a spokesman for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), told USA Today. The mission to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons program, which is led by the OPCW, "has reached a kind of a stasis at the moment."

The OPCW has little recourse if Syria flouts the agreement. It is tasked only with cataloging and destroying the weapons turned over, and cannot conduct investigations of its own, 海角大神 reported this fall.聽

Last week, OPCW聽director Gen. Ahmet 脺z眉mc眉 cited concern about the slow pace.聽鈥淲hile the two shipments [of chemicals] this month represent a start, the need for the process to pick up pace is obvious,鈥� he said. 鈥淲ays and means must be found to establish continuity and predictability of shipments to assure States Parties that the programme, while delayed, is not deferred.鈥�

The US has scoffed at the Syrian regime's security concerns, USA Today reports.聽

Russian officials said they are working with the Syrian regime to develop a new timetable for removing or destroying the weapons, and there is no reason to be worried. "I would not dramatize the disarmament issue," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told RIA Novosti, according to Agence France-Presse. "Literally yesterday the Syrians announced that they are planning to move out a large amount of chemical substances in February."

The missed deadline has unleashed a chorus of "I told you so's." The chemical weapons agreement was met with skepticism and even condemnation at the time.聽

James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said Wednesday at a House of Representatives intelligence committee hearing that the chemical weapons agreement聽had allowed President Assad to grow stronger, The New York Times reports.

A chemical weapons deal based on trust was never going to succeed because Assad is far from trustworthy, writes David Schenker, director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He cites the Syrian leader's continued smuggling of oil to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, despite promises to the US to stop, as well as broken promises to stop assisting Palestinian militant groups and shut down the "jihadi pipeline" to Iraq during the war there, as evidence of Assad's "prodigious track record of reneging on promises and violating international agreements."

Assad may be holding onto weapons for his Plan B: defending a regime statelet in the event that Syria is partitioned in an agreement. Citing unnamed Israeli and Russian sources, The Sunday Times reported on Feb. 2聽(paywall)聽that Assad is stockpiling weapons, including biological and chemical ones.

One source told the Times, 鈥淪yria has given up only about 4 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal, will miss this week鈥檚 deadline to send all toxic agents abroad for destruction, and probably will miss the June 30 deadline when the entire 1,300 tons of lethal chemical weapons were due to be destroyed."

Assad is believed to be gathering some of the weaponry in the heartland of his Alawite sect, along the Mediterranean coast. The Alawites, a Shiite sect, make up only about 12 percent of Syria's population, but include the Assad family, as well as many other key members of the regime.聽

"This region is now totally fortified and isolated from the rest of Syria,鈥� an Israeli military intelligence source told the Times. 鈥淭he most advanced weapons manufactured in Syria and imported from Russia are kept there.鈥�