John McCain and Lindsey Graham: US-Russia Syria agreement ‘meaningless’

Just a couple days after Syria ratified the global anti-chemical weapons treaty, the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, the United States and Russia agreed Saturday on a plan to bring Syrian chemical weapons under international control.

Image/CIA

Under the agreement, the deal involves making an inventory and seizing all components of Syria’s chemical weapons program and imposing penalties if President Bashar Assad’s government fails to comply will the terms.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the Assad regime has a week to provide all details on its chemical weapons arsenal.

They are also seeking to have the destruction finished by mid-2014.

While the possible imposed penalties include sanction, the deal will not include any authorization for war.

Two US Senators have come out in opposition to this agreement.

In a joint statement from Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Saturday, the hawkish Members said:

“What concerns us most is that our friends and enemies will take the same lessons from this agreement – they see it as an act of provocative weakness on America’s part. We cannot imagine a worse signal to send to Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon.

“Without a U.N. Security Council Resolution under Chapter 7 authority, which threatens the use of force for non-compliance by the Assad regime, this framework agreement is meaningless. Assad will use the months and months afforded to him to delay and deceive the world using every trick in Saddam Hussein’s playbook. It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama Administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin.

“What’s worse, this agreement does nothing to resolve the real problem in Syria, which is the underlying conflict that has killed 110,000 people, driven millions from their homes, destabilized our friends and allies in the region, emboldened Iran and its terrorist proxies, and become a safe haven for thousands of Al-Qaeda affiliated extremists. Is the message of this agreement that Assad is now our negotiating partner, and that he can go on slaughtering innocent civilians and destabilizing the Middle East using every tool of warfare, so long as he does not use chemical weapons? That is morally and strategically indefensible.

“The only way this underlying conflict can be brought to a decent end is by significantly increasing our support to moderate opposition forces in Syria. We must strengthen their ability to degrade Assad’s military advantage, change the momentum on the battlefield, and thereby create real conditions for a negotiated end to the conflict.”