By Can Kasapoğlu
The Ongoing Threat from Assad’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
This weekend, a joint offensive of various armed opposition groups toppled the dictatorship of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, ending his clan’s 53-year rule. But while the Assad regime is gone, its WMD program remains an urgent problem for the international community.
Assad, who is believed to have fled to Russia, leaves a legacy marked by the pursuit and use of WMDs. In 2013, when Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and agreed to disarm its chemical weapons program, the Assad regime reportedly declared 1,300 tons of chemical warfare agents and precursors and 1,230 unfilled WMD-delivery munitions across 41 facilities at 23 different locations. But declassified Cold War–era data and recent military intelligence assessments suggest that Syria’s chemical warfare efforts run even deeper than those figures suggest.
Just last week, Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations under secretary general and high representative for disarmament affairs, warned the UN Security Council that unresolved issues surrounding Syria’s elimination of its chemical weapons program are “extremely worrying.” In its 2023 special report, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) also noted that the Assad regime may possess undeclared stockpiles of chemical weapons.
This would be no surprise given that Assad’s Syrian Arab Army used lethal agents against its own people long after its 2013 commitment to disarm—including a sarin nerve gas attack on April 4, 2017, in the town of Khan Shaykhun and a deadly chemical salvo on April 7, 2018, in the town of Douma. In response to these violations, Washington (and later a coalition of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom) struck Syria’s chemical weapons production centers and related military targets.
The need for similar international cooperation to address the threat posed by Syria’s weapons of mass destruction is no less urgent now that Assad is gone. Three items are of particular concern to the West: VX nerve agent stockpiles, unknown biological weapons capacity, and recent snake venom derivative production.
VX Nerve Agent
Of the Assad regime’s chemical warfare agents, VX is perhaps the most dangerous. VX rapidly disrupts the signals the brain sends to vital organs, and even limited exposure to the agent can kill a person in minutes. It can be disseminated through aerosols or dispersed into food and water supplies.
According to experts, Syria possesses a substantial quantity of VX. Weapons inspectors have also found undeclared traces of the nerve agent in the country. The West needs to secure the regime’s stockpile of this deadly chemical weapon lest it falls into the hands of terrorist groups or rogue states.
Biological Weapons Know-How and Research
Syria signed but never ratified the Biological Weapons Convention. In July 2012 Syrian Foreign Office spokesman Jihad Makdissi stated that Damascus would never use its chemical or biological weapons, implicitly acknowledging their existence for the first time. In 2014, James Clapper, then the US director of national intelligence, assessed that Syria’s biological weapons program may have progressed beyond research and development and achieved a limited capability to produce biological agents.
Clapper also affirmed what many had suspected: that Assad’s Syria had cooperated with North Korea on weapons of mass destruction. Experts have testified before Congress that Pyongyang has managed to weaponize various bioagents, including the contagious and deadly smallpox. Several publications suggest that Damascus and Pyongyang might have acquired smallpox strains from the 1972 Yugoslavian outbreak and modified them. The potential that Syria and North Korea exchanged bioweapons underscores why the international community needs to heighten its vigilance and cooperation to address future WMD threats.
Snake Venom Derivatives
Open-source intelligence also suggests that Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (CERS) has been researching bioweapons derived from the venom of snakes, including the Indian cobra. That snake’s venom contains powerful post-synaptic neurotoxins and a dangerous cardiotoxin that can beweaponized.
Moreover, a pharmaceutical research center run by the Razi Institute in the Iranian city of Karaj might be attempting to weaponize the venom of another lethal snake, the Caspian cobra. Tehran’s military-grade biological research has previously been linked to the Razi Institute, particularly the institute’s vaccine and serum programs. In recent years, Tehran and Damascus have boosted cooperation between Syria’s CERS and Iran’s Razi, raising eyebrows over the rogue states’ research into bioweapons derived from naturally occurring toxins. Previously, the Islamic Republic sought to employ scientists from the Soviet Union’s massive germ warfare program. Though unconventional, these weapons would be deadly in the wrong hands.
Securing Syria’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
Containing an established and well-dispersed WMD program is no easy task. Yet concerned nations have already begun efforts to ensure that the threat from Syria’s weapons of mass destruction dies with the regime that built the weapons. This weekend, the Israeli Air Force launched a series of attacksagainst Syrian military airbases suspected of harboring chemical weapons.
The international community should be ready to intervene further at the first sign that Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles are at risk of being seized by nefarious actors. The OPCW should be granted full access to any undeclared chemical weapons sites. Safeguarding the regime’s documentation of its chemical weapons program—and military uses of it—will likely be a high priority for those seeking to levy war crimes charges against Assad and his generals. In this respect the armed opposition’s rhetoric has been somewhat promising, but still needs to be proven reliable.
Furthermore, the West should encourage the new Syrian regime to comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention and ratify the Biological Weapons Convention. The United States and its allies should also work to prevent Syria’s weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of hostile actors such as Hezbollah and its backers in Tehran, as well as al-Qaeda and the terrorist networks of the Islamic State (ISIS).
The personnel involved in the research and production of chemical and biological weapons are as important as the agents they produce. Terrorist networks and rogue states will stalk these experts to all corners of the world to acquire their knowledge. Keeping intelligence channels open with the incoming Syrian governance structure will be essential in tracking and securing these critical personnel.
Though Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship has fallen, his regime’s weapons still threaten the world. The West should remain vigilant to contain the chaos that is consuming Syria as best it can.