Is Washington on the brink of a major attack on Syria?
By
Bill Van Auken
28 August 2018
The US and its allies are systematically putting into place all the elements needed to justify and carry out a major new act of aggression against Syria, according to reports from Moscow and the Middle East.
The charges that Washington is preparing an unprovoked attack followed warnings made by US National Security Adviser John Bolton, as well as by British and French officials, that their governments would retaliate sharply against any use of chemical weapons by the government of President Bashar Assad in the northern Syrian province of Idlib.
Recent bombing and shelling by the Syrian military, as well as the reported transfer of the Syrian army regiment based in the city of Homs to the southern border of Idlib, have raised speculation that Damascus is on the verge of launching an offensive to retake one of the last territories still under the control of Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias. These forces were armed and funded by Washington, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to wage a seven-year-long proxy war for regime change aimed at installing a more pliant pro-imperialist regime in Damascus.
The Assad government has denied employing chemical weapons in its campaign to reassert control over areas of the country seized by the Western-backed “rebels.” It has accused the Al Qaeda-linked forces of staging chemical weapons incidents with the aim of provoking US military attacks on the regime, like the ones carried out last April and in 2017.
Speaking at a press conference in Jerusalem last Wednesday, Bolton declared: “We are obviously concerned about the possibility that Assad may use chemical weapons again. Just so there’s no confusion here, if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons…