Former Shin Bet head says Russia, US weren’t dealing with Syria

Israel is officially refusing to admit to hitting Syrian chemical sites, as reported by The Washington Post just now, but former Shin Bet head and current Likud MK Avi Dichter appears to confirm Israeli worries about Syrian chemical weapons.

“If the [Bashar] Assad regime did not hesitate to use chemical weapons against civilians, of course any Syrian outfitting of nerve weapons would be a real cause for worry in Israel. If the regime uses them against Syrians, imagine for yourselves what else it could do,” he says.

He also seems to makes the case for why Israel would not trust international guarantees about its enemies, following a US-Russian-Syrian deal eight years ago to rid Syria of chemical arms.

“It’s hard to see the Russians taking aggressive action against Assad. He’s guilty not only of making chemical weapons but of using them against civilians, and despite that he’s remained as a figure that they hold onto and have even revived. One also has to admit that the Americans weren’t really in Syria,” charges Dichter, who previously headed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

If the implications were not obvious, he intimates that Israel will take what action it needs to against Iran with or without the backing of the US, which is engaged in indirect talks with Tehran on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.

“If the day comes that we have no choice, we’ll need to do something with what we have and not just with what we want,” he says.