The United States is boosting military support to the main Syrian rebel group after determining that the government has used chemical weapons against the opposition, a top White House official has said.
“The president has made a decision about providing more support to the opposition, that will involve providing direct support to the [Supreme Military Council], that includes military support,” Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call on Thursday.
“This is going to be different in both scope and scale in terms of what we are providing to the SMC than what we have provided before.”
The Supreme Military Council is the military wing of the main civilian opposition group.
‘Syria used chemical weapons’
The US working with European allies concluded that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against the rebels killing up to 150 people.
The White House said on Thursday that the casualty data was likely incomplete and that it had no reliable, corroborated information to suggest that the Syrian opposition in the country’s civil war had acquired chemical weapons.
“Our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year,” Rhodes said.
He said that the “intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date.”
Rhodes said in a written statement that the Syrian government’s refusal to grant access to the United Nations to investigate credible allegations of chemical weapons use had prevented a comprehensive investigation as called for by the international community.
The White House said in a statement issued late on Thursday that the use of chemical weapons “violates international norms and crosses clear red lines”.
Earlier, the United Nations said the number of those killed in the Syrian conflict had risen to close to 93,000 people.
‘Game changer’
President Barack Obama has said repeatedly that the use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” and constitute a “game changer” for US policy on Syria, which until now has focused entirely on providing the opposition with nonlethal assistance and humanitarian aid.
“The president has been clear that the use of chemical weapons – or the transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups – is a red line for the United States,” Rhodes noted.
“The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has.”
Rhodes did not say if the United States was moving towards directly arming the rebels battling Assad but said Obama “will be consulting with Congress on these matters in the coming weeks.”
“The United States and the international community have a number of other legal, financial, diplomatic, and military responses available. We are prepared for all contingencies, and we will make decisions on our own timeline,” he said.
