Matthew 24:7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
The Wall Street Journal has reported U.S. intelligence agencies have told them the Syrian regime of Bashir al-Assad has not turned over all of their chemical weapons as agreed to in 2013.
Assad and his government had agreed to give up all their chemical weapons after a sarin nerve agent attack on a Damascus suburb. The negative response of the international community and threats to the Syrian government appeared to make them relent of their use of chemical agents.
Inspectors told the Journal that in their visits to Syria, they were only taken to areas that the Assad government said were chemical weapons storage and/or production facilities. The inspectors were not allowed into areas that were not designated chemical weapon locations by the Syrian government.
“Under the terms of their deployment, the inspectors had access only to sites that the Assad regime had declared were part of its chemical-weapons program. The US and other powers had the right to demand access to undeclared sites if they had evidence they were part of the chemical-weapons program. But that right was never exercised, in part, inspectors and Western officials say, because their governments didn’t want a standoff with the regime,” the report states.
“Members of the inspection team didn’t push for answers, worried that it would compromise their primary objective of getting the regime to surrender the 1,300 tons of chemicals it admitted to having,” the report stated. “The Syrians laid out the ground rules. Inspectors could visit only sites Syria had declared, and only with 48-hour notice. Anything else was off-limits, unless the regime extended an invitation.”
Now, American intelligence agencies say they believe Assad is holding a cache of nerve agents even more powerful than Sarin for use if the terrorist group ISIS makes a run at Syrian government stronghold and appear to be close to overrunning them.
The breaking of this news comes on the heels of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons saying the Syrian chemical weapons have been neutralized at sea on a U.S. Naval vessel, the Cape Ray.
However, 16 metric tons of hydrogen fluoride from the Syrian stock remains in storage at a facility in Port Arthur, Texas.
