Israeli military vehicles entered the village of Saida al-Golan, in Quneitra Governorate today, searching homes in the area and capturing one civilian before withdrawing from the village toward the farmland further to the west. A large number of IDF vehicles were also reported as having entered the al-Samandiyah village, where troops searched a number of […]

Few countries in the Middle East expect a turning point in relations with Israel. But the outcome of the vote has implications for the regional conflict with Iran.

© David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

Airstrikes carried out by Jordan on Monday night against positions in southern Syria—allegedly linked to the jihadist group Islamic State (IS)—have triggered a diplomatic rift between the two nations. The friction stems from a lack of prior coordination and the fact that the strikes resulted in civilian casualties, including children.

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On Tuesday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry criticized the Hashemite Kingdom for conducting the military operation without prior coordination, describing the action as completely unacceptable and a violation of Syria’s national sovereignty.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry also suggested that certain suspicious groups might be attempting to strain relations between Damascus and Amman, though it provided no further details regarding this claim.

Jordan framed the airstrikes as retaliation for an attack last Friday on a church in the western part of the kingdom, which left nine people dead and approximately 40 injured. Jordanian authorities attributed the attack to the Islamic State, although the organization has not yet claimed responsibility.

#Syria hardened its stance on the Jordanian attack carried out yesterday in the South.

While the Syrian Foreign Ministry initially expressed "reservations" about the Jordanian airstrikes in a statement last night, this morning, as the civilian death toll was confirmed, Damascus… pic.twitter.com/RvgfBLFVIV

— Qalaat Al Mudiq (@QalaatAlMudiq) October 27, 2026

Mohammad Momani, Jordan’s Minister of Government Communications and government spokesperson, stated on the social media platform X that the strikes were launched in response to the movements of these organizations and their acts against Jordan’s national security.

Momani expressed regret over the civilian casualties, maintaining that the armed forces had taken every possible precaution to avoid harming innocent people.

Syrian authorities confirmed that seven people were killed in the strikes, which targeted four areas in the southern province of Daraa. The victims included three children and an 80-year-old man.

Both countries have confirmed the establishment of an urgent joint committee to strengthen coordination in the fight against terrorism. Meanwhile, Momani expressed a commitment to developing bilateral ties for the mutual benefit of both nations.

#Syria | At least 14 people were killed and 11 injured in an explosion at a temporary weapons depot near Sarmada in Idlib province.
Rescue teams are searching the rubble for survivors, while authorities have not yet determined the cause of the blast.#Idlib #teleSUREnglish pic.twitter.com/q5utCtzkFE

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) September 9, 2026

Jordan on Tuesday acknowledged that airstrikes it launched in southern Syria on Monday caused civilian casualties, while also claiming that the attack killed about 20 ISIS fighters. Amman framed the strikes as retaliation for the October 23 attack on St. George’s Orthodox Church in Jordan’s western Karak province, which killed nine Christians who were attending […]

Amman does not say which groups it targeted, but says 'many members of terror group' killed and wounded; Damascus says at least 7 killed, including women and children

The post Deadly Jordanian Strikes Highlight Syria’s Cross-Border Terror Threat (Videos) appeared first on South Front.

The Jordanian military on Monday launched airstrikes in southern Syria, a bombing that Amman framed as retaliation for the October 23 attack on St. George’s Orthodox Church in Jordan’s western Karak province, which killed nine Christians who were attending a funeral. The strikes hit multiple locations in Syria’s Suwayda and Daraa provinces, and according to […]

The US and Israeli-led war with Iran, launched in late February, and other military campaigns in the region have disrupted flights, leaving around 5,500 deportations that would normally receive support from the EU’s border agency Frontex unexecuted.

The disruption comes despite the Warsaw-based agency’s recent announcement that returns rose in the first half of 2026, with Syrians and Iraqis among the 10 nationalities most frequently deported.

Internally, however, Frontex appears concerned.

In July, it highlighted return problems because of the Middle East crisis, a broad swathe of conflicts that has seen various airspace closures over Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Israel, Qatar, Syria, and the UAE.

It said roughly 4,000 returns had not been carried out because of direct cancellations or broader operational standstills, with member states halting the organisation or scheduling of Frontex-supported returns due to the Middle East conflicts.

By 30 September, that figure had climbed to 5,500.

Although now open (as of publication), airspace restrictions, route availability and operational measures may be introduced, amended or lifted rapidly, sometimes with little notice.

European deportation setbacks typically involve everything from fragmented national systems, to people absconding, and to foreign states refusing to accept their own nationals. But war and conflict are now adding another layer of complications.

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

The Israeli military launched large-scale domestic military exercises on Sunday to counter surprise border infiltrations and ground raids across northern and central Israel, mobilizing multiple divisions and air assets amid rising regional tensions.

The drills, set to continue over 48 hours, came as an Israeli security expert invoked the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria used exercises to disguise preparations for a surprise attack, warning that escalating tensions in the region could in fact trigger what he described as a "dangerous miscalculation."

The large-scale maneuvers, the IDF said, involve the Northern Command’s 210th Division, the West Bank Division, and the Central Command’s 98th and 96th divisions, alongside the Israeli Air Force.

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The exercise, scheduled just ahead of Israel's elections Oct. 27, aims to "maintain the forces’ alertness and readiness, strengthen the ability to defend communities, and make full use of aerial capabilities for defense in the area," according to the IDF.

On Friday, the IDF said troops would practice "a variety of scenarios, including a surprise attack and infiltration into Israeli territory by air and land," incorporating lessons learned from the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

"This exercise is mostly about non-state actors with or without Iranian support," Israeli national security analyst Dr. Ehud Eilam told Fox News Digital.

"It's aimed at those in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan who might try to infiltrate into Israel or send ground raids. Some are supported by Iran; others are not. It could be planned by Iran or be a local initiative."

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"This is a massive exercise, the biggest one in recent years, aimed at protecting the borders," the former Israeli Ministry of Defense researcher added.

"It's all about making sure that the election day on October 27 will run smoothly. It's also a message to Iran and others: don't try to provoke us during election day, so nothing will be disrupted."

The Israeli drills followed a show of force by Tehran days earlier, during which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired roughly 30 ballistic missiles across two distinct weapon classes, according to reports.

That live-fire display highlighted Iranian strike capabilities and sparked renewed alerts about commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and prompted the Israeli military to heighten its alert level while maintaining maximum readiness for a targeted strike against Iran.

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During a visit to the IDF's Central Command on Wednesday, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned that the risk of escalation was growing.

"Given the numerous warnings across all fronts and the sensitivity of the current period, the potential for escalation has increased," Zamir said.

"To ensure better operational control on the ground, we have reinforced our troop deployments across all sectors, including moving the 98th Division into the area to strengthen security and stability."

"Part of mutual deterrence: a few days ago, Iran had their own pretty big exercise, and that was actually more intimidating as far as Israel is concerned because they launched missiles and prepared for a war with Israel," Eilam said.

"This exercise on Sunday and Monday is against Iran's proxies and allies at the border of Israel."

Sunday’s Israeli drill also followed an Oct. 19 mission in which Israeli fighter jets and aerial refueling tankers flew 800 miles across Syrian and Iraqi airspace to Iran’s border.

FROM INTELLIGENCE SHARING TO MISSILE DEFENSE, HOW ISRAEL'S PARTNERSHIP PROTECTS AMERICAN SECURITY

Washington was notified in advance and viewed the maneuver as a non-kinetic show of force following the postponement of a broader strike package earlier in the month.

Despite the deterrence signals, Eilam warned that large-scale military exercises carry the "risk of miscalculation" and particularly when troop movements could be mistaken for preparations for an attack.

"During the Cold War, every time the Soviet Union or NATO carried out a major drill, having so many troops in the field meant they might attack if that was the intention," Eilam said.

He pointed to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria used military exercises to help conceal troop buildups along Israel's borders.

Israeli intelligence largely dismissed the movements as routine drills, allowing the two countries to achieve strategic surprise when they launched a coordinated, two-front attack on Yom Kippur.

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"The classic example in Israel is 1973, when Egypt and Syria conducted a major exercise just before the war that turned into the actual attack," the analyst said.

"Israel and Iran are now watching each other very closely and both sides suspect the other might strike first," Eilam added before stating that there is the chance of what they call "miscalculation — that each side suspects the other and strikes first by mistake."

"It's all about sending messages to each other."

"It remains uncertain whether there will eventually be an Israeli attack on Iran because it depends on U.S. authorization," Eilam concluded.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

"Right now, both sides are signaling: 'We are ready, don't mess with us, but we don't want to start a war right now.'"

Israeli troops continued to operate across southwest Syria over the weekend, with multiple incursions reported against the Quneitra Governorate seemingly focused primarily on excavation and carving out the “Sufa 53 Line” that the IDF is imposing on the ground in the area. Israel has been keen on establishing a trench-line separating Syria from its own […]

The post Turkey Moves to Rebuild Syria’s Navy, Opening a New Front Against Greece and Israel appeared first on South Front.

Israeli ground troops have been raiding the Yarmouk River Basin in the western part of Syria’s Daraa Governorate in growing numbers and more frequently in recent days. The restrictions placed on locals have been onerous enough to attract some international attention. Now, a fatality will add to those concerns. The incident happened overnight Thursday in […]

Six years after the Abraham Accords, a new report by a former Israeli intelligence chief outlines a doctrine treating peace deals as temporary and regional instability as an asset. (This the latest chapter of a decades long Israeli strategy)

It’s the last week before Israel’s elections, and the concern around Syria that there may be a pre-election “surprise” seems palpable. The belief is that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu may seek to politically benefit from a new operation within southern Syria in the next few days. And while Israel’s ongoing military operations in Syria are […]

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Ukraine has opened its first war-crime case against a ship captain for carrying off its stolen grain. Ukraine’s Security Service and Prosecutor General’s Office have charged the captain of the cargo ship Matros Pozynich with illegally shipping more than 54,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat that Russian forces stole from occupied territory, the Security Service said on Telegram.

Russia has looted grain across the Ukrainian land it occupies and sold it abroad as its own, a trade Ukrainian intelligence puts at more than 2 million tons in 2025 alone. The case against the Matros Pozynich captain is the first time Kyiv has classified a ship captain’s role in that trade as a war crime, prosecutors said.

The captain, a Russian citizen, twice sailed wheat from occupied Sevastopol in Crimea to the Syrian port of Latakia in 2022 and 2023, according to the Security Service. The first shipment of more than 27,000 tons left Crimea in 2022, and another 27,000-plus tons followed in January 2023.

A crime ordered from the top, investigators say

The shipments were no freelance smuggling run. The grain was removed on the decision of the Russian state’s top political leadership, the Security Service stated, in breach of the Geneva Conventions, which forbid pillaging property in occupied territory.

To hide the voyages, the captain periodically switched off the ship’s automatic identification system and transmitted false coordinates, investigators found. He was notified of suspicion in absentia under two articles of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, including the violations of the laws and customs of war. The service said it is working to identify others in the scheme.

One ship in a fleet that feeds the war

The vessel is a single thread in a much larger theft. Russia has taken roughly 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain from occupied territory between 2022 and August 2025 and earned at least $1 billion from it, money that helps fund the war.

Much of it moves through Russian-controlled ports such as Sevastopol, often relabeled as Russian produce or passed between ships at sea to hide its Ukrainian origin. Buyers have included Syria, Egypt, Türkiye, Lebanon, and others, though Egypt has since pledged to stop accepting grain tied to occupied territories.

Israeli military ground raids into southwest Syria continued to happen in growing numbers this weekend, with troops raiding multiple towns and villages in Daraa and Quneitra Governorates. At least four Syrian civilians were reported captured over the course of the weekend’s operations. One was reported captured Saturday during the operations around al-Razaniyah, in northern Quneitra, […]

OPCW Inspector Ian Henderson responds regarding alleged newly-found, un-declared chemical weapons.

By Ian HENDERSON | Consortium News | October 11, 2026

If Douma, one of the highest-profile “proven” chemical attacks attributed to Syria’s former Bashar Assad government, has been shown to be fake, what does it say about new, undeclared Syrian chemical weapons that have supposedly been found?

It says we should be extremely skeptical about news of such discoveries.

I spent years compiling an insider’s analysis of the evolving Western narrative of Syrian chemical attacks while I was at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as well as afterwards.

My conclusion was it is nigh impossible to prove a negative in this situation; to say there had never been a chemical attack by the Syrian government forces.

However, when it came to high-profile allegations of such attacks in the Syrian towns of East Ghouta, Khan Sheykhoun, Ltamenah, Saraqib and Douma, there were fatal flaws in the official narratives.

There were unmistakable signs, clear to us on the inside, of fabrication.

The Douma attack eight years ago appeared to be the last of a series of chemical allegations against the regime.

Yet the saga continues. The OPCW sent a new mission to Syria this May to try to find alleged, undeclared chemical weapons from the government of Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in 2024.

Before examining the intentions and results of this mission, it is useful to review how the Western-backed OPCW handled its investigation into the 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma, a suburb of Damascus.

I was an OPCW inspector on that mission and this is why I blew the whistle.

The Establishment Narrative

Just how much of the establishment narrative that blamed Assad for using chemical weapons be believed ?

Devised during the early part of the Western and Gulf-backed jihadist war to overthrow Assad a decade and a half ago – and built upon steadily by Western belligerents throughout the crisis – the story that Assad had “gassed his own people” was widely believed with mainstream media fully on board.

Doubters were glibly dismissed, including “official” dissenters such as some senior inspectors at the OPCW. I was among them.

The chemical allegations followed a well-oiled procedure. Armed opposition groups – who were seeking direct Western military intervention to support their effort to overthrow Assad – would raise the alarm online by posting slick images and videos of an alleged chemical attack.

These opposition groups, sometimes assisted by Western NGOs, would then bring supposed witnesses of these alleged attacks to Gaziantep in Turkey, where the OPCW would send fact-finding missions to interview them.

The OPCW would generally believe the opposition groups and their witnesses and accept items of supposed “evidence” handed over to them, sometimes months after the alleged attack. Until the Douma allegation in 2018, the fact-finding mission never got to the scene of any Syrian chemical attack after an initial attempt in 2014 went awry.

The fact-finding report would be secretly drafted under the direct control of OPCW top management, bypassing any procedural or technical oversight, and would conclude that it was “reasonable to believe” that a chemical attack had indeed taken place.

The follow-up investigations by the heavily politicized Joint Investigative Mechanism (J.I.M.), or by the later Investigation and Identification Team (I.I.T.), would suggest that “a reasonable person would believe” that the Syrian Armed Forces were responsible for the attack.

OPCW inspectors are not fools. Many of us saw what was going on, seeing the tight political control that the U.S. and to a lesser degree the U.K. exerted over anything to do with the Syrian file. But the draconian confidentiality regime in the OPCW kept everyone subdued.

The breakthrough came after the April 2018 Douma allegation.

For the first time, an OPCW team actually got to the scene of an alleged chemical attack, at the town of Douma, in southwestern Syria, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) northeast of Damascus.

We did our job thoroughly, and in doing so we identified serious flaws in the allegation.

OPCW Extreme Measures

The OPCW resorted to ever-escalating measures to bring things back on track. After trying to secretly modify the interim report by withdrawing it from publication and sneaking in the preordained conclusions that were required by influential delegations, senior OPCW officials went to extremes.

They removed all the team members who had gone to Douma and produced a flawed Fact Finding Mission report written by persons unknown, none of whom had much knowledge of what the Douma team had done.

The fact-finding report predictably found that “it was reasonable to believe” there had been an attack with chlorine in Douma. This was followed much later by the OPCW’s inevitable I.I.T. report that blamed the Syrian regime for the attack.

In reaching its conclusions, the drafters claimed, as usual, to have been informed by anonymous experts. The context in the reports was usually along the lines of  the fact-finding mission (F.F.M.) “asked an expert about this and the expert said it was possible.” Many qualified experts and commentators, including me, consider this laughable.

The OPCW were going too far, and ultimately this led to the ongoing dispute where the two most senior and experienced inspectors in the F.F.M. team objected.

The drafter of the team’s interim report, Dr. Brendan Whelan (“Inspector B”), was one. I was the other. In my case I had also led the politically-mandated inspections at two facilities of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre (S.S.R.C.) suspected of harbouring illicit chemical weapons activities.

Here again, we did our work thoroughly and in drafting the S.S.R.C. inspection reports I made clear that there was nothing amiss in either of the facilities.

This didn’t stop the U.S., U.K. and France from conducting punitive missile strikes on Barzah S.S.R.C., on the basis of social media postings on the Douma allegation, even before the OPCW team had arrived at the incident scene.

Rather than another detailed analysis of the Douma scandal, suffice it to say, the official Douma narrative has been clearly and scientifically picked apart by many credible observers, including by Dr. Whelan and myself.

This has been widely reported, although predictably not much in the mainstream media.

The OPCW and Western delegations have been in crisis management mode ever since the first leak, that of an internal engineering summary that cast doubt on the allegation that chlorine cylinders had been dropped from aircraft, raising the possibility that militants had placed the cylinders to stage the scene of a chemical attack.

I was the author of that report.

Nose of chlorine cylinder alleged to have smashed through a steel-reinforced concrete roof, April. 21, 2018. (OPCW, courtesy former Syrian government)

Worse still for the prevailing Douma narrative, Dr. Whelan recently won a legal case against the OPCW for their charges against him of confidentiality breaches.

In their submissions, the OPCW inadvertently admitted to suppressing the key toxicology assessment (incidentally by NATO specialists) that dismissed chlorine as the likely cause of death of deceased victims shown in images posted from the scene.

[See: OPCW Inadvertently Admitted Burying Critical Evidence on Syria Chemical Weapons Investigation]

The OPCW has refused to engage in any discussion on the facts and scientific substance of the case, ever since concerns were first raised by Dr. Whelan and myself.

This intransigence to re-open the file is likely dictated by the needs of the three belligerent governments that subjected Syria to punitive missile strikes in retaliation for the supposed Syrian chemical attack even before the Douma F.F.M. had started work.

Any updated or corrected findings on Douma would be inconvenient.

The New OPCW Mission

Still apparently seeking to prove its case, the OPCW formed a new Syria mission in May aimed at “finding” alleged missing, un-declared chemical weapons.

At the end of May the mission reported finding 42 empty chemical weapons munitions; a launcher; bomb-mixing units; precursor-type containers; a facility whose contents were not revealed and thousands of pages of documents that are still being reviewed.

The mission also found 650 kg of “a chemical compound known to have been used by the former government for the production of nerve agents,” which the report does not name. It says an unknown quantity of hexamine, a legal chemical with wide industrial use, was found but it is not clear if this is the same compound as in the 650 kg.

In September, the Syrian government, now under the leadership of a former al-Qaeda and ISIS leader, began destroying the empty bombs, but not any of the chemicals that were found, presumably meaning none were banned.

Despite all the fanfare of these results being presented at a U.N. Security Council meeting last month, it appears that the new OPCW mission came up as empty as those bombs.

None of these discoveries does anything to prove that Assad ever used a chemical weapon, in other words, nothing to prove that I, along with other OPCW officials and countless observers and commentators who challenged the Assad chemical weapons narrative were wrong.

Presumably after all the effort in creating that narrative, Western governments and mainstream media that promoted the Iraq war and then the Syrian conflict to achieve regime change in that country, require a tidier ending than the mess they made of the Iraqi WMD story.

An early press release from the OPCW is telling. It shows what they were attempting to prove with this May mission, in particular two rather flimsy suggestions.

They report the discovery of some of the empty munitions,

“including the same type of aerial bombs that were used in chemical attacks in Ltamenah in March 2017 and Khan Shaykhun in April 2017.”

This refers to empty M4000 aerial bombs, declared by the Syrians as part of their stockpile.

Aside from the questionable Douma-like irregularities surrounding “evidence” used by the OPCW to conclude that sarin-filled M4000 bombs were used in those attacks, it’s important to mention something else.

The Syrians had clearly explained to us that 2,000 of these bombs, never filled, had been set aside to be “repurposed,” in other words to be filled with high explosive to turn them into conventional munitions. These could turn up anywhere.

A second questionable statement in the press release is,

“Rockets were also found, of the same type as those that were used in the Ghouta chemical weapons attack in August 2013.”

This relates to artillery rockets crudely modified with a large cylindrical payload container added at the front.

For a start, the U.N./OPCW report of Ghouta did not attempt to identify the perpetrators of that sarin attack, since it was not part of their mandate. The accusations against the regime have always been political, something the mainstream media happily took up.

The Most Credible Analysis So Far

The Ghouta sarin attack took place on Aug. 21, 2013 and according to Western sources killed more than 1,000 people in the Damascus suburb.

The most serious investigation of the Ghouta incident to date points to the attack being launched from opposition-occupied positions, and remains the most credible analysis of the attack.

Indeed the U.N./OPCW team was in Damascus at the time of the attack in Ghouta because it was responding to an earlier request from the Syrian government to investigate chemical attacks against their forces.

The OPCW release also mentions a typical catch-all referring to “quantities of separately stored chemicals and related equipment, the nature of which is currently under technical analysis.”

There will always be suggestions of vague bits and pieces, rusty remnants that “may have been a part of” alleged undeclared elements of a chemical weapons program.

And, keep in mind, it’s been 22 months since the Assad government was ousted and their enemies in the opposition group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have been running the country.

So far as I can see, the OPCW hasn’t found anything remotely close to the desired smoking gun. Anything real, I should say.

Partners in the Anti-Assad Chemical Narrative

Syrian President Ahmaad Al Shaara, former Al Nusra/HTS fighter, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in New York City, September 2025. (State Department Photo, Wikimedia)

We need to keep in mind how this is working. There are three partners in this latest endeavour on the anti-Assad chemical narrative.

First, we have the Western governments, belligerents in the Syrian conflict, which worked hard on building the chemical narrative to delegitimise the regime.

The U.K. government offered specialists to check out suspected sites in Syria to prepare them for the May mission in order to “assist” the current government in finding evidence of hidden chemical weapons.

That leads us to the second group, the government in Syria, reportedly eager to please their Western sponsors in return for economic favours. They are the Al-Nusra/HTS extremists who, in the case of Douma, fabricated the scene to raise a chemical false flag allegation against the Assad.

The third partner is the OPCW.

That means the various groups who have been on this mission are a) those who staged scenes of chemical attacks; b) those who directed them to do so (including Western intelligence agents who allegedly coached and assisted them); and c) the organisation that went along with the narrative and dutifully produced reports damning the Assad regime.

It may appear to the reader that I’m suggesting that the OPCW reports on Syrian chemical weapons will continue to be little more than propaganda, the usual sexed-up nonsense. Perhaps so. In disputing this, these assertions will be dismissed as conspiracy theories.

However, this argument is weakened because the source of the alternative narrative is the scientists and senior inspectors (many “Western”) from within the OPCW teams, including the Douma fact-finding mission and Scientific Studies and Research Centre inspections.

This is why Douma remains a key element in the debate. If they did it once (and doggedly stuck to their guns), they probably did it before.

Many serious and eminent observers are imploring the OPCW to conduct a review of the Douma case, including by the OPCW’s own Scientific Advisory Board.

I see this being done by credible, independent and neutral experts in the fields of chemistry, toxicology, metallurgy and engineering, overseen by the relevant professional institutes.

These experts would report their findings transparently, putting their names and reputations behind their analysis. This will clear up the Douma controversy, either demonstrating that it could have actually happened as alleged, or demonstrating the flaws in the OPCW reports.

Exposing a clear and deliberate fraud would seriously weaken the Western narrative on alleged Syrian chemical attacks. Therefore, in my view, it is not going to happen under the purview of the OPCW.

Ever.

I don’t mean to suggest that those calling for a review are unrealistically hopeful. But the risks of such a review are perhaps too high for it ever to be envisaged by the Western group that was aligned with the efforts on regime change in Syria — chiefly the U.S., the U.K. and France.

This does not mean it can’t happen. There is more than enough open-source material, as well as now-unclassified facts, images, analysis results and information available from the OPCW itself, from former OPCW officials and inspectors, and held by Member States, that would support a credible in-depth review.

The basis for expert analysis would be the material used in the fact-finding mission and I.I.T. reports themselves.

By now we know there isn’t any “smoking gun” evidence. If there had been, it would have been cited in the mission and I.I.T. reports.

Trust me, this study will bear clear results. My hope is that someone sufficiently curious and responsible will commission and fund it.

---

Ian Henderson served as an OPCW inspector from the establishment of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, and was appointed as one of the first Inspection Team Leaders. An experienced chemical engineer with military experience, he led many of the more complex missions to more than 55 countries. After returning to a career in the chemical industry for 10 years he rejoined the OPCW in 2016 as part of the “rehire” scheme aimed at bringing back experienced inspectors. It was during this time that he became involved in the Syrian chemical weapons operations and, along with others, objected to the apparent influences of political control in the organization. He was suspended from the OPCW in May 2019 after the leak (by unknown others) of his dissenting engineering report on the Douma cylinders.