US will respond to Syria’s chemical attack ‘forcefully’, says Trump

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump said
the US will respond “forcefully” to a suspected chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime over the weekend, after suggesting earlier that Russian President Vladimir Putin may share responsibility.
“We’re making a decision on what we do in respect to the horrible attack that was made near Damascus and it will be met and it will be met forcefully,” Trump told reporters at a meeting with military leaders.
“We can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed, and you can see that and it’s horrible, we can’t let that happen in our world,” Trump said.
“We can’t let that happen. Especially when we’re able to, because of the power of the United States, because of the power of our country, we’re able to stop it.”
He would not describe the US response or say when it would come. “I don’t like talking about timing,” he said. Trump ordered a cruise missile strike against a Syrian airbase after a chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians in April 2017, the first direct American assault on Assad’s forces since the conflict in Syria began in March 2011. Rescue workers and activists said dozens of civilians, including children, died in a chemical attack on April 7 in Douma, a rebel-held town, amid a renewed assault by Assad’s government.
“If it’s the Russians, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out, and we’ll know the answers quite soon,” Trump said at the beginning of a Cabinet meeting.
Asked if Assad’s patron Putin shares responsibility for the attack, Trump answered: “He may. If he does, it’s going to be very tough. He’ll pay a price.”
Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed in a phone call “to continue their coordination on responding to Syria’s atrocious use of chemical weapons,” the White House said. “If the red line has been crossed, there will be a response,” French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told Europe1 radio.
Russia and Syria have denied using chemical weapons in the country’s civil war, and Moscow’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said at a Security Council meeting on Monday that Saturday’s attack either didn’t happen or was orchestrated by the US.
Trump said evening that “we are getting some very good clarity, actually” on who was responsible for the attack. “We have some pretty good answers.” He didn’t elaborate.
The president said earlier that he expected the American military to assess who was at fault for the attack within a day.
The White House National Security Council’s principals committee held a meeting earlier in the morning to discuss the chemical weapons attack, a person familiar with the matter said. Tensions in the Middle East escalated even higher with an airstrike by unknown warplanes against a Syrian airbase. Russia blamed Israel for the raid; Israel hewed to its customary no-comment policy; and it wasn’t immediately clear whether the facility had a link to the chemical weapons attack. Iran’s Tasnim news agency said that the bodies of seven Iranians killed in the missile strike were returned to Tehran.
Trump wasn’t scheduled to be at the NSC meeting but his top national security aides planned to participate, including new National Security Adviser John Bolton, said the person.