TEL AVIV – If the U.S. really wants to stop the massacres in Syria, it needs to target President Bashar Assad’s palace in Damascus, an article published in Saudi’s government daily suggested.
“This is not the first time Bashar Al-Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons against its own people, nor is it the first time it will be punished with a military strike. But the criminal did not stop his crimes and the military penalties failed to deter him,” Okazcolumnist Khaled Al-Suleiman wrote, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
The U.S. and its allies, Suleiman wrote, must choose “between an effective strike that will cause [Syria] to think 1,000 times before repeating its crime” and attacking “empty targets that have been evacuated.”
In a joint operation with the UK and France, chemical weapons sites, including a storage facility and a research base, were targeted in the pre-dawn hours, constituting the largest military intervention since the civil war began. However, according to Russian reports, no one was harmed in the strikes. The military assault was a response to the chemical gas attack on the Syrian town of Douma last week in which 42 people reportedly died and many others, according to images and video, were left gasping for breath and foaming at the mouth.
Suleiman’s article comes amid an intense debate in Saudi Arabia surrounding the joint military strike. Four days prior to the missile assault, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman said in a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron on April 10 that Saudi Arabia was “ready to join [its] allies in any military action in Syria, should this be necessary.” READ MORE
