With al-Assad's Chemical Weapons in the Hands of the OPCW, the UN and America Should Take on Syria's Civil War and Iran

As a convoy of SUVs marked "UN" left their central Damascus hotel where the inspection team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is staying, the task was to head out into the country to inspect production facilities and hold discussions on the location and size of Syria's chemicals stockpile. But first, the convoy had to pick its way through dangerous Damascus suburbs where at least 19 soldiers and pro-government militiamen have been killed in clashes in the past three days, according to the London-based Syria Observatory for Human Rights. Fighting between rebels and al-Assad forces raged on the edge of Damascus Wednesday, while rival rebel factions battled each other in northern Syria as the UN chemical weapons inspectors began to secure the sites where they will work on finding, inspecting and estimating the size of al-Assad's estimated 1,000-ton arsenal of chemical weapons. The goal, following the Security Council resolution passed last week, is to destroy Syria's capacity to manufacture chemical weapons by November 1 and to destroy its entire stockpile by mid-2014. The in-fighting in the contested Damascus Barzeh district flared up Monday when the army increased its attacks against rebel forces trying to capture the area. Districts on the edge of Damascus are important for rebels based in the capital's outer suburbs as they try to move closer to the heart of the city. There were also reports of in-fighting between al-Qaida rebels and more moderate rebel groups in the town of Azaz on the Turkish border, where militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant made advances against fighters from the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, the Observatory said. There were no reports of casualties. The increasing rebel in-fighting adds a new complication to the 2½-year-old civil war, in which more than 100,000 Syrians have been killed and more than 2 million displaced. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it was relatively easy, once Russia agreed, to draft a weak UN chemical weapons inspection resolution for Syria. In reality, after Syria agreed to join the 98% of the world's nations that have agreed neither to use nor stockpile nor make Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction, Syria fell under the regulatory regime of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Indeed, the UN Security Council resolution merely mimics the OPCW regulatory program. It is now up to OPCW inspectors to deal with al-Assad and his chemicals stockpile. If they have problems, they will report to the Security Coyncil, which will meet to decide how to proceed. That is what President's sabre-rattling followed by indecision has bought - when Russian President Putin stepped into the Obama vacillation to seize control of the Syria chemical weapons agenda. While Obama has reserved the right to act unilaterally, his past performance would suggest that the Syria crisis is now completely in the hands of the OPCW and the UN Security Council. This is where the US Congress and people prefer to be on this issue. We can now ask whether President Obama and the UN will without delay turn their attention to ending the Syrian civil war, providing aid to the beleageured Syrian people and attempting to bring under control Iran's nuclear program - itself very likely a development of prohibited Nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction - while there is still time to prevent Iran from menacing Israel and the Middle East with nuclear bombs.