On Tuesday, Syrian forces slaughtered civilians in the Idlib province with sarin nerve gas and thereafter they (or their allies) launched rockets at the clinics where the wounded were being treated. According to the Syria Report, the atrocity was timed to send a message to the U.S. and its allies:
The attack occurred the day the European Union hosted in Brussels a large international-funding conference for Syria—which was initially supposed to focus on reconstruction but was scaled down—and as the U.S. administration was sending mixed signals with regard to its policy toward Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
[W]hile the regime is sensing a gradual shift toward a restoration of ties, it knows the West is not there yet. Thus, rather than making concessions or political gestures, the regime is further raising the stakes and the political cost for the West of not cooperating. . . . By committing large-scale massacres, the regime shows the West’s impotence and weakness to the world, delegitimizing all the political values it claims to stand for. [Assad is, in effect, saying], “You don’t want to restore ties? I will kill more civilians and show the world how impotent and cowardly you are.”
The more the attack is publicized, the more the West is humiliated—hence the timing of the attack during the Brussels conference. As soon as the outcry fades, pro-regime analysts, bureaucrats, and politicians in the EU and U.S. will complete the regime’s job and push for restoring ties and accepting the regime’s blackmail “for the sake of protecting Syrian civilians and improving their livelihood.” . . .
Since the former U.S. president Barack Obama’s green light in September 2013, Assad has known that a large-scale attack against [Syrian] civilians is a short-term public-relations liability but a long-term political asset.
More about: Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, European Union, Politics & Current Affairs, Syrian civil war, U.S. Foreign policy