US Treasury sanctions 18 senior Assad regime officials

The United States Treasury today slapped sanctions on eighteen senior Assad regime officials following the results of a joint US-UN investigation that found that the regime had used industrial chlorine as “a weapon against its own people”.

The Treasury has designated eighteen senior regime officials connected to Syria’s weapons of mass destruction development programme and connected five Syrian military branches as being connected with the chemical attacks.

The use of chemical weapons is prohibited under international law, and their use against civilians in particular is a war crime.

A UN Security Council body released two reports in August and October 2016 that found that the Assad regime, and in particular the Syrian Air Force, was responsible for chemical attacks in three different locations across 2014 and 2015.

The five military branches identified as now being subjected to sanctions, in addition to the air force, are the “Syrian Arab Air Defence Forces, Syrian Arab Army, Syrian Arab Navy and Syrian Arab Republican Guard.”

Effectively, this means that the entire Syrian military has been identified as being a target for US sanctions due to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons.

This is the first time that the United States has sanctioned Syrian military officials for the Assad regime’s long-documented chemical weapons use that has claimed thousands of civilian lives.

“The Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own people is a heinous act that violates the longstanding global norm against the production and use of chemical weapons,” said Adam Szubin, Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

“Today’s action is a critical part of the international community’s effort to hold the Syrian regime accountable for violating the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and UN Security Council Resolution 2118.”

The worst case of Assad regime chemical weapons usage was during the Ghouta attack in August 2013 that killed 1,729 people in a single day. US President Barack Obama shortly thereafter backed down from his “red line” of chemical weapons usage, criticised as giving the Assad regime the greenlight to continue using weapons of mass destruction.

Although the Ghouta attack was not included in the US Treasury’s sanctions announcement, attacks in Talmenes, Qmenas and Sarmin were mentioned.