BICOM

According to a Reuters report, an unnamed Israeli official has said that the Assad regime in Syria still has access to chemical weapons, despite seemingly complying with international monitors to dismantle its chemical stockpile.

A year ago, Syria agreed to abide by a United Nations Security Council resolution to disarm its chemical arsenal in cooperation with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Although Syria has ostensibly complied, Reuters quotes an Israeli official who said, “There is, to my mind, still in the hands of Syria a significant residual capability … that could be used in certain circumstances and could be potentially very serious.”

The official claimed a “high degree of confidence” in his information and that, “there are a number of questions here that still have to be clarified, still have to be looked at very closely” by international inspectors. However, the official indicated it was unlikely that the Assad regime would threaten Israel, commenting that such a scenario “wouldn’t be a game-changer, it would be a game-ender” for Syria.

Asked whether there was a danger that ISIS could lay their hands on chemical stockpiles and deploy them against Israel, the official said that, “I haven’t seen any information that they [ISIS] have received them. I would not be surprised if they are interested, though, in receiving them.” Should that happen, he added, it would not impossible for ISIS to launch “a bunch of grenades with sarin.”

Israel has been careful to remain uninvolved with the three-year-old Syrian Civil War which is raging on its northern border. However, it has been widely reported that Israeli air strikes have prevented weapons from being transferred from Syria to Hezbollah. The official indicated that such a policy would continue, saying, “When we have seen things that we are concerned about, whatever has been done has been done, and that’s it. We have been very careful not to be sucked in. So that policy will continue.”