U.S. Launches Missile Strike on Syria After Gas Attack

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. launched a cruise missile attack against Syria after accusing Bashar al-Assad’s regime of using poison gas to kill scores of civilians, an act President Donald Trump called “an affront to humanity.”

“Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” Trump told reporters Thursday night at his Florida club, where he hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier in the evening. It is in the “vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons conventions.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the U.S. attack as an “act of aggression against a sovereign state” that will cause “considerable damage” to relations with Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

The limited strike early on Friday morning in Syria was aimed at hangars, planes, fuel tanks, ammunition storage and air-defense systems at the Shayrat Airfield, according to the Pentagon. The airfield was hit with 59 Raytheon Co. Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the USS Porter and USS Ross, two Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea.

At least four were killed and tens of Syrian government troops were wounded in the attack, according to the U.K.-based opposition monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The task of military planners was made more complicated by the presence of Russian forces in Syria to support Assad’s regime in its battle against rebel groups that include Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters but also some backed by the U.S. The Pentagon notified the Russians before the strike was launched, and U.S. military planners “took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield,” according to Captain Jeff Davis, a Defense Department spokesman.

Russian forces so far have not been placed at risk by the U.S. actions, said Frants Klintsevich, the deputy head of the defense and security committee in the upper house of parliament. “But if we see a threat to our bases or our servicemen, we of course will put the airspace in order,” he said by phone. Russia has advanced air-defense systems in Syria to protect its bases, which include a naval facility and an airbase.

Vladimir Safronkov, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, said before the strikes that any U.S. military action would have “negative consequences.”

The decision to attack marked a stark reversal for Trump, who during his presidential campaign faulted past U.S. leaders for getting embroiled in conflicts in the Middle East. But he said this week that the deaths of children among the more than 70 killed in the April 4 attack, images of which were broadcast worldwide, crossed “beyond red lines” and changed his thinking. 

“It was a slow and brutal death for so many,” Trump said Thursday. “Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered at this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”

It was also a departure from the approach of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who had weighed a military response in 2013 after Assad launched a sarin gas attack that killed more than 1,000 people near Damascus. Although he had defined the use of chemical weapons as a “red line” that would draw a U.S. response, Obama stepped back from military action after the parliament in the U.K., a crucial ally, declined to participate and public support in the U.S. waned.

Instead the U.S. and Russia negotiated an agreement for Assad to surrender his chemical weapons stockpile, an accord that the Syrian government appears to have breached. The U.S. has high confidence that the attack this week used a chemical nerve gas consistent with sarin, according to an American official who asked not to be identified discussing the findings.

Blasting Russia

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blasted Russia’s support for Assad’s regime and said they hadn’t kept up their end of the agreement four years ago that was supposed to clear Syria of chemical weapons stockpiles.

“Clearly Russia has failed to deliver on that commitment from 2013,” Tillerson, who’s scheduled to go to Moscow for talks next week, told reporters in Florida after Trump spoke. “So either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been incompetent in its ability to deliver.”

He said other governments in the region were supportive of the U.S. action, which he called a “proportional” response directed at facilities used in the chemical attack.

The attack was launched just as Trump wrapped up his dinner with Xi at the president’s Florida resort. It’s their first face-to-face meeting, and among the main topics for their discussions is how to respond to North Korea’s attempts to refine missile and nuclear weapons technology. Trump and Tillerson have made clear that the U.S. has lost its patience with attempts to negotiation with the regime in North Korea.

China’s Leverage

China is the only nation with leverage on North Korea, and Trump’s decision to strike quickly in Syria is likely to color their discussions.

“The Chinese now perhaps more than before will realize that this president can decide to take dramatic action,” said Dennis Wilder, who was senior director for Asia on former President George W. Bush’s National Security Council and a China military analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. “It ups the stakes for the Chinese on North Korea.”

In the wake of the missile strike, investors turned to gold, a haven during times of geopolitical conflict, which already was rising this week amid signs of escalating tension on the Korean peninsula. Bullion for immediate delivery climbed as much as 1.4 percent to $1,269.46 an ounce, the highest since November, and traded at $1,264.85 at 11:27 a.m. in Singapore, according to Bloomberg generic pricing. The yen also rallied along with Treasuries, and oil spiked with West Texas Intermediate climbing as much as 2.4 percent to a one-month high of $52.94 a barrel in New York

Back when Obama was deciding whether to attack in Syria, Trump repeatedly tweeted that the U.S. shouldn’t get bogged down there, and that Obama shouldn’t act without approval from Congress. Trump didn’t get such a formal authorization vote before Thursday night’s strike.

Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the strikes were “a clear signal that the United States will stand up for internationally accepted norms and rules against the use of chemical weapons.”

Congressional Consultation

But he said in a statement that “any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress.”

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said she was briefed in advance of the strikes, and she gave them a cautious endorsement. “Tonight’s strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons,” she said in a statement, adding that any further escalation should be accompanied by an Authorization for Use of Military Force from Congress.

Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have long pressed for military action against Assad, said the strikes “sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin’s Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs.”

But backing for the strikes wasn’t universal. Michigan Representative Justin Amash, a member of the conservative Republican Freedom Caucus, said in a tweet that the attack was “an act of war. Atrocities in Syria cannot justify departure from the Constitution, which vests in Congress power to commence war.”

Target Information

The U.S. forces conducting the strikes were aided by surveillance photos and electronic signals of airfields, command-and-control facilities and air defense systems gleaned during thousands of aircraft sorties over Iraq and Syria since 2014, when operations began against Islamic State that later spread into Syria. When the Obama administration contemplated strikes against Syria in 2013, it also built a picture of Syria’s most vulnerable targets.

“Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons,” Davis, the Pentagon spokesman, said.

Syria’s six-year civil war has only become more complex in recent years. Russia intervened on Assad’s behalf in late 2015, adding to a fight that now includes Iranian, Turkish, Syrian and extremist forces.

UN Debate 

At the United Nations, diplomats privately debated a resolution that would condemn the poison-gas attack and demand access to Syrian air bases by UN investigators. Russia, which has backed Assad militarily since late 2015, would probably veto that measure after putting forward a separate measure which wouldn’t compel Syria to provide such access.

At the Security Council on Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley stood up at her desk to show diplomats photos of dying children gasping for air. She accused Russia of pushing a “false narrative” that blames rebel forces for the attack, and issued a new warning.

Safronkov, the Russian diplomat, said he’d been “very frank” in consultations with U.S. officials.

“We have to think of negative consequences, and all responsibility of military action will be on the shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise,” he told reporters at the UN

Syria’s government said pilots bombed what turned out to be a rebel-controlled chemical weapons stockpile, while Russian officials on Wednesday said it’s too soon to assign blame for the attack. Nonetheless, it appeared before Thursday night’s missile strike that Russia’s support for Assad hadn’t diminished.

--With assistance from Jennifer Jacobs Ilya Arkhipov Steven T. Dennis Roxana Tiron and Henry Meyer

To contact the reporters on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net, Nick Wadhams in Palm Beach, Florida at nwadhams@bloomberg.net, Toluse Olorunnipa in Palm Beach, Florida at tolorunnipa@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Joe Sobczyk, Larry Liebert