Global Security Newswire

Syrian specialists roughly one week ago started mixing the precursor agents for sarin nerve agent in a potential sign that dictator Bashar Assad could be preparing to mount chemical weapons attacks, Wired reported on Monday, citing an informed anonymous U.S. official.

Foreign observers today are more concerned than at any other point in the 20-month Syrian civil war about the possibility of unconventional weapons being used in the Middle Eastern state.President Obama and other top U.S. officials on Monday delivered new warnings of the serious but unspecified consequences that would result should Damascus carry out chemical strikes.

It is not clear to Washington why the government is relocating some chemical warfare materials to various sites in the nation and taking steps to prepare sarin. Some believe Assad would only order chemical attacks after determining he is without any other option to hold onto power.

Opposition forces in recent days have seized several military outposts close to Damascus and have notched a few successes in challenging the Syrian military's air power, which has been the regime's principal weapon for assaulting rebel-occupied territory.

"The U.S. government has good visibility into the chemical weapons program and we continue to monitor it," U.S. Defense Department spokesman George Little said on Monday.

Damascus is understood to possess in excess of 500 metric tons of the sarin precursor agents methylphosphonyl difluoride and isopropanol, which are normally stocked apart to avoid an unintended chemical agent event. In recent days, Syrian engineers started mixing a quantity of precursors. "They didn't do it on the whole arsenal, just a modest quantity," according to the official. "We're not sure what's the intent."

"Physically, they've gotten to the point where they can load it up on a plane and drop it," the source told Wired.

"Any consideration of the use of chemical weapons by ... the Syrian regime would be unacceptable," Little said. "The Syrian regime must maintain security over their chemical weapon stockpiles and must not use chemical weapons against their own people," the Pentagon spokesman added.

Though the evident chemical weapons preparation might not mean a toxic attack is imminent, Syria's neighbors and international organizations are not taking chances. The United Nations is withdrawing all nonessential personnel from the Arab country while Egypt directed a civilian aircraft en route to the Syrian capital to fly back. Israel, meanwhile, has asked Jordan whether it could accept an Israeli airstrike on Syrian chemical facilities.

The Pentagon has assessed it would require roughly 75,000 military personnel to take control of Syria's substantial chemical arms complex. The high footprint makes such an intervention undesirable to Washington.

An unidentified U.S. official told CNN that "this puts into the contingency of potential U.S. action."

Possibilities for military intervention include air attacks and ground assaults on Syrian chemical sites by a restricted number of troops in the region, the Associated Press reported, citing interviews with an ex-U.S. official and a serving official.

U.S. military personnel are already in Jordan advising the country's armed forces on how to take control of Syrian chemical sites in cooperation with forces from other nearby nations, the anonymous officials said.

In the last half year, U.S. intelligence personnel gained access to a communique they think was from the Iranian military's Quds force. The intercepted message pressed Assad loyalists to use sarin agent against opposition forces and their backers in Homs, according to an ex-U.S. official. No other similar reports have turned up and different intelligence sources say Tehran is opposed to Damascus using its chemical arsenal.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday told journalists it would "be completely unacceptable to the whole international community" if Damascus were to employ chemical weapons. "If anybody resorts to these terrible weapons, then I would expect an immediate reaction from the international community," Reuters quoted him as saying.

Other high-level officials offered similar messages.

"We have become more concerned about them (chemical weapons) in recent days, for the same reasons the United States has," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday on the margins of a two-day session of top NATO diplomats in Brussels, Belgium.

"We have already sent our own clear private message to the Syrian regime -- directly to them -- about the serious consequences from the use of such weapons," Reuters quoted Hague as saying.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh on Monday said it would be a "game-changer" if Assad orders chemical attacks, Agence France-Presse reported. "This is a situation that for us in Jordan is of particular and serious concern."

Regional tensions that have stymied agreement on carrying out a more forceful intervention in Syria would "certainly change" following such a development, Judeh asserted. "Nobody will think twice about agreeing to do something immediately should these weapons be used or should they pose a threat."

In Istanbul on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed to signal his government was backing away from its steadfast support of Damascus. "We are not protecting the regime, and we are not advocates," Xinhua News Agency quoted Putin as telling reporters.

"What worries us is the future of Syria," he said in a media appearance with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "We do not want mistakes to be repeated."

Syria is strongly suspected of at one point quietly building a nuclear reactor that was destroyed by Israel in 2007 before it could go live. "Syria is not in a position to use nuclear weapons. There are no nuclear weapons in Syria. They are not even close to [making] it," Putin said.