Syria Plays With Sarin

Remember back during the Cold War, when from time to time a Soviet weapons test would go awry?

Sometimes word would leak out that a lot of people mysteriously died in some remote part of Siberia or Kazakhstan, as occurred after the anthrax “accident”. More than likely, though, no one outside of the CIA or NATO intelligence knew anything about it until after the USSR fell and the archives were opened.

The biggest incident, of course, was at Chernobyl in 1986, when Moscow tried to keep the lid on a nuclear accident for as long as possible. The radioactive cloud that passed over Poland and Scandinavia made that secret hard to maintain, however.

Something similar seems to have happened this past summer in Syria. Here’s the latest from the Jerusalem Post:

‘Dozens died in Syrian-Iranian chemical weapons experiment’

Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane’s Defence Weekly report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.

According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas.

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Reports of the accident were circulated at the time; however, no details were released by the Syrian government, and there were no hints of an Iranian connection.

The report comes on the heels of criticism leveled by the Syrians at the United States, accusing it of spreading “false” claims of Syrian nuclear activity and cooperation with North Korea to excuse an alleged Israeli air incursion over the country this month.

This is pretty scary stuff. Iran and North Korea are already rogue countries, and Syria, like so many Muslim states in the Middle East, has only a single corrupt dictator and his clique standing between traditional despotism and a full-fledged Islamist regime.

It’s food for thought.