Syria chemical attack, orchestrated event: Analyst

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called for the formation of an “impartial” international fact-finding committee to look into the recent chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib Province that left dozens of people dead.

Jim W. Dean, the managing editor of Veterans Today, said President Rouhani has put a “silver bullet” into this issue, adding that the United Nations’ investigations cannot be trusted due to the immense pressure on it from the likes of Saudi Arabia when writing the final reports.

“We need a very strong independent report not only on this incident but on the background that we have of past incidents being misreported and we have to really put a light on how deeply the intelligence organizations of several Middle East countries, the West and Israel are very involved in these chemical weapons type attacks that they can use to discredit the [Syrian President] Bashar al- Assad regime,” the analyst told PressTV in an interview on Saturday.

He also noted that Western media has completely “rolled over” on this incident, explaining that they did not even address what motive Assad or the Syrian military would have had to use chemical weapons at this point, given the fact that it would undermine the entire peace process.

The commentator further opined that the chemical attack in Idlib was an “orchestrated event” in an attempt to derail the peace talks and try to break up Syria’s “winning momentum” and the upper hand that Damascus has in pressuring the militants to come to the negotiating table.

Tuesday’s gas attack in the Idlib town of Khan Shaykhun killed at least 86 people. Anti-Damascus militants and Western countries rushed to blame Assad for the Idlib incident, without providing any evidence to support their accusations.

This is while Damascus had roundly rejected any role in the tragedy. Russia and Syria say the army’s Idlib airstrike had targeted a depot where terrorists stored chemical weapons.

Using the Idlib tragedy as a pretext, US President Donald Trump ordered Washington’s warships in the eastern Mediterranean to launch a missile strike against Shayrat Airfield in Syria’s Homs Province on Friday, which Washington alleged was the origin of the alleged chemical attacks.