Die Ukraine-Krise steht derzeit sicher zu Recht im Mittelpunkt der Aufmerksamkeit, aber davon nicht unabhängig gibt es ja auch noch den Krieg in Syrien und im Zusammenhang damit eine Menge ungelöster Fragen. Eine davon lautet: Was hat Obama am letzten Augusttag 2013 dazu bewogen, den bereits angekündigten Luftwaffenangriff auf Syrien doch noch abzublasen, obwohl der Termin für den Beginn der Bombardierungen schon auf den 2. September festgesetzt war? Seymour Hersh, der der Sache damals nachging, ist weiter am Ball geblieben und hat jetzt wieder in der London Review of Books neue interessante Erkenntnisse veröffentlicht.
Denen zufolge ging aus damaligen Geheimdienstberichten nicht nur hervor, daß auch Rebellen gegen Assad das Sarin hätten produzieren können, sondern sogar, daß das in Al-Ghouta verschossene Sarin eben nicht mit den in Assads C-Waffenarsenalen lagernden Sarin-Chargen identisch war. Ein ehemaliger US-Geheimdienstmitarbeiter der Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) hat Hersh gegenüber ausgesagt, die DIA kenne die Zusammensetzung jeder jemals in der Sowjetunion hergestellten Giftgaslieferung. Nach dem Giftgasangriff vom 21. August 2013 habe der russische militärische Geheimdienst in Al-Ghouta Proben nehmen können und diese nach genauer Analyse an den britischen Geheimdienst weitergegeben. Dieser sei bei seinen Untersuchungen der Proben zu einem eindeutigen Resultat gekommen: ‟The gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal.”
In letzter Minute hätten daraufhin amerikanische Geheimdienstler und Militärs das Weiße Haus davon informiert und ihm ihre Vorbehalte mitgeteilt. ‟The Porton Down report caused the joint chiefs to go to the president with a more serious worry: that the attack sought by the White House would be an unjustified act of aggression. It was the joint chiefs who led Obama to change course.” Selbst dem nicht gerade zimperlichen Generalstab der US-Armee war ein Überfall auf Syrien nicht geheuer.
Fazit: Nach Erkenntnissen der russischen und angloamerikanischen Geheimdienste hat entgegen Obamas wiederholten Behauptungen nicht Assads Armee Giftgas gegen die Zivilbevölkerung eingesetzt, sondern dieses heimtückische Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit wurde von Mitgliedern der oppositionellen Rebellenverbände begangen.

Bleibt die Frage, woher sie die Chemikalien zur Herstellung von Sarin bekommen haben. Die wahrscheinlichste Antwort: von Erdogans Türkei.
‟Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front”, schreibt Hersh. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’
Bei seinem Staatsbesuch in Washington im Mai 2013 soll Erdogan mehrfach versucht haben, Obama zu einem Eingreifen in Syrien zu bewegen:
‟An American foreign policy expert who speaks regularly with officials in Washington and Ankara told me about a working dinner Obama held for Erdogan during his May visit. The meal was dominated by the Turks’ insistence that Syria had crossed the red line and their complaints that Obama was reluctant to do anything about it. [...]
’Without US military support for the rebels’, the former intelligence official said, ‘Erdogan’s dream of having a client state in Syria is evaporating and he thinks we’re the reason why. When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him – where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’

‟In spring 2013 US intelligence learned that the Turkish government – through elements of the MIT, its national intelligence agency, and the Gendarmerie, a militarised law-enforcement organisation – was working directly with al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability. ‘The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training – including training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said [...]
On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort [...] Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’
Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin. [...] The ringleader, Haytham Qassab, and his associate Khalid Ousta worked with Halit Unalkaya, an employee of a Turkish firm called Zirve Export, who provided ‘price quotes for bulk quantities of sarin precursors’”, heißt es in dem DIA-Bericht.
‟As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdogan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it [...]’, the former intelligence official told me. ‘There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdogan.’”