„That agreement, brokered by the United States and Russia and so far seemingly upheld, became the Obama administration’s lone bright spot in the five-odd years of Syrian carnage. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, President Barack Obama said he was ‚very proud‘ of his decision to step back from a decision to bomb Syria and take the deal. The removal of Syria’s declared chemical weapons, added Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, constituted ‚the one ray of light in a very dark region.‘
But there’s growing reason to be concerned that Syria hasn’t come fully clean. While Syria has destroyed the vast majority of its declared weapons program, busting up laboratories and vital production equipment and incinerating more than 1,300 tons of chemical weapons precursors, U.S. and European officials fear that Syria may have retained a limited reserve. Syria’s repeated denials that it ever weaponized nerve agents, in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, has only reinforced suspicions that Damascus may have retained some chemical weapons as a last line of insurance against a threat by the country’s myriad armed opposition forces and terrorists.“
(Colum Lynch: „Chemical Weapons Watchdog Continues Hunt for Syria’s Elusive Nerve Agent“)